Donald F. Murray Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics in A Narrative Sequence About David 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29 JSOT Supplement Se PDF

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES
264
Editors
David J.A. Clines
Philip R. Davies
Executive Editor
John Jarick
Editorial Board
Robert P. Carroll, Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, J. Cheryl Exum,
John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald,
Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller
Sheffield Academic Press
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Divine Prerogative
and Royal Pretension

Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics
in a Narrative Sequence about David
(2 Samuel 5.17-7.29)
Donald F. Murray
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 264
Copyright 1998 Sheffield Academic Press

Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
Mansion House
19KingfieldRoad
Sheffield SI 19AS
England
Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain

by Bookcraft Ltd
Midsomer Norton, Bath
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 1-85075-930-8
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
9
11
13
Chapter 1
THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 1: DEFINING

AND DELIMITING CONTEXTS
1.1. Defining the Title, Delimiting the Subject
1.1.1. What Are Divine Prerogative and Royal
Pretension?
1.1.2. Why Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics?
1.1.3. The'p'-words as Defining my Close Reading
1.2. Delimiting the Text to Be Read
1.2.1. The Story of David in Samuel
1.2.2. 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29 within the Story of David
in Samuel
1.2.3. Delimiting the End of the Unit
1.2.4. Delimiting the Beginning
1.2.5. Structure and Cohesion of the Unit
1.3. Prospect: Deferring the Difference
17
17
17
20
24
25
25
26
27
28
30
33
Chapter 2
THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 2: DEFINING THE TEXT

TO BE READ
2.1. What Text?
2.2. Text, Translation and Notes
2.2.1. Hebrew Text
2.2.2. English Translation
2.2.3. Notes on the Text
37
37
39
41
46
49
Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension
Chapter 3
DAVID DEFERENT WITH YAHWEH? 2 SAMUEL 5.17-25
85
3.1. Contextualizing the Text

3.2. A Close Reading of 2 Samuel 5.17-25
3.2.1. What Is the Question?
3.2.2. Verses 17-21
3.2.3. Verses 22-25
3.3. Narrative Structure and Technique in 5.17-25
3.3.1. Verses 17-21
3.3.2. Verses 22-25
3.3.3. The Two Episodes Related
3.4. Poetics and Ideology in 5.17-25
85
86
86
87
98
103
103
106
108
109
Chapter 4
DAVID DIFFERENT WITH YAHWEH: 2 SAMUEL 6

4.1. Contextualization
4.1.1. Title and Theme
4.1.2. Narrative Connections: Plot, Scene, Time
4.2.1. Verses 1-11
4.2.2. Verses 12-20a
4.2.3. Verses 20-23
4.3. Narrative Structure and Technique in 2 Samuel 6
4.3.1. The 'Similar Motion' System in 6.1-20a
4.3.2. The 'Contrary Motion' System in 6.1-20a
4.3.3. The Michal-David Episode 6.16, 20-23
4.4. Summary: Theme, Rhetoric and Ideology in 6.1-23
112
112
112
112
113
114
131
139
145
147
150
153
156
Chapter 5
DAVID AND YAHWEHFROM DIFFERENCE TO DEFERENCE:

2 SAMUEL 7
5.1.2. Narrative Connections: Scene, Time, Plot
5.2.1. Verses 1-17
5.2.1.1. Verses 1-3
5.2.1.2. Verses 4-7
5.2.1.3. Verses 8-lla
160
160
160
160
162
162
163
167
176
Contents
5.2.1.4. Verses llb-16
5.2.1.5. Verse 17
5.2.2. Verses 18-29
5.2.2.1. Verses 18-21
5.2.2.2. Verses 22-24
5.2.2.3. Verses 25-29
5.3. Rhetorical Structure and Technique in 2 Samuel 7.1-29
5.3.1. Verses 1-17
5.3.1.1. Verses 1-3
5.3.1.2. Verses 4-7
5.3.2. Disputatory Structure of 7.1-17
5.3.3. Rhetorical Structure of 7.18-29
5.4. Ideology of Polemic in 7.1-29
1
185
199
199
200
205
207
211
211
212
212
215
215
218
224
226
Chapter 6
YAHWEH AND DAVID AT HOME AND AT WAR:

PLOT AND THEME IN 2 SAMUEL 5.17-7.29
6.1. Reader's Orientation
6.2. Plot and Thematic Development within 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29
6.2.1. Chapter 5, Verses 17-25
6.3. Ideological Polemic in 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29
231
231
232
232
233
239
245
Chapter 7
YAHWEH AND DAVID THROUGH DIFFERENCE AND

DEFERENCE 1: A TRANSTEXTUAL CONTEXT TO THE
POLEMIC IN 2 SAMUEL 5.17-7.29
7.1. Retrospect and Orientation
7.1.1. The Polemic against melek-ship
7.2. Royal Ideology in the Ancient Near East
7.2.1. Sources of Evidence
7.2.2. Ancient Near Eastern Royal Ideology in
Overall Plot and Theme
7.2.3. Ancient Near Eastern Royal Ideology in
the Polemic of 2 Samuel 7
7.2.3.1. Verses 1-3
247
247
249
249
250
252
261
261

7.2.3.2. Verses 4-7
7.2.3.3. Verses 8-1 la
7.2.3.5. Verses 18-29
7.3. Concluding Remarks
263
265
269
277
278
Chapter 8
YAHWEH AND DAVID THROUGH DIFFERENCE AND

DEFERENCE 2: AN INTRATEXTUAL CONTEXT TO THE
POLEMIC IN 2 SAMUEL 5.17-7.29
8.2. The Term T3] nagid in the Hebrew Bible
8.2.1. General Survey
8.2.2. The Term TE nagid in Samuel
8.2.2.1. 1 Samuel 9.16,10.1
8.2.2.2. 1 Samuel 13.14
8.2.2.3. 1 Samuel 25.30
8.2.2.4. 2 Samuel 5.2
8.2.2.5. 2 Samuel 6.21 and 7.8
8.3. Synthesis
281
281
281
281
284
285
289
291
295
297
298
Chapter 9
YAHWEH AND ISRAEL: DEFERENCE OF DIFFERENCE

9.1. Orientation: What Is the Difference? How Is It
to Be Deferred?
9.2. Polarities of Governance: Between melek and nagid
9.2.1. Foreshadowings of Compromise in Samuel
9.2.2. Polemical Polarization in 2 Samuel 5.17-7.1 la
9.2.3. Polemical Compromise in 7. llb-29
9.3. Ideological Polemic and the Deference/Deferral
of Difference
Glossary of Some Technical Terms
Bibliography
Index of References
Index of Words
Index of Authors
Index of Subjects
302
302
304
305
307
310
311
317
320
331
345
349
351
LIST OF FIGURES
1. Retroverted Textual Readings for 2 Samuel 7.15b//
1 Chronicles 17.13b
2. Textual Readings relative to iTliT "OIK in
2 Samuel 7.18-29
3. Retroverted Textual Readings for 2 Samuel 7.23/7
2 Chronicles 17.21
4. Semantico-structural Paralleling in 2 Samuel 5.17
5. Parallels between 1 Samuel 7.7 and 2 Samuel 5.17
6. Interrelation of Opening Sequences in
2 Samuel 5.17-19, 22-23
7. Plot and Rhetorical Structure in 2 Samuel 5.17-21
8. Plot and Rhetorical Structure in 2 Samuel 5.22-25
9. Parallels in Linear Plot Structure between
2 Samuel 5.17-21 and 5.22-25
10. Parallel Structure of 2 Samuel 6.20bpy and 6.21aa 3.5
11. Parallel and Contrastive Elements in the 'Similar
Motion' System in 2 Samuel 6.1-20a
[2. 'Similar Motion' Progression Structure in
2Samuel6.1-20a
13. 'Contrary Motion' Progression Structure in
2Samuel6.1-20a
L4. Structure in Episode 3, 2 Samuel 6.16b, 20-23
15. Chiastic Parallelism between 2 Samuel 7.5b and 7.1 Ibp
L6. Syntactico-Rhetorical Parallels between 2 Samuel 7.la,
2 and 7.12
17 Direct Parallelism between 2 Samuel 7.5b and 7.13a
18 Parallels between Joshua 7.8 and Ezra 9.10
19 Parallels between 2 Samuel 7.13b-14a and 7.24
20 Rhetorical Structure in 2 Samuel 7.5b-7
21 Parallel Expressions in 2 Samuel 7.12-16
22 Narrative and Disputatory Structure in 2 Samuel 7.1-17
74
74
81
90
90
99
107
107
108
143
148
151
151
155
186
191
192
204
206
213
217
221
10
23. Recursive Structure in 2 Samuel 7.5b-1 Ib

24. Parallels between 2 Samuel 7.5b, 7b, 1 lb|3
25. Schema of Ideological Polemic in 2 Samuel 7.1-17
222
224
228
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An author owes, as every author of an academic book knows, many
debts of gratitude to colleagues, friends, fellow scholars and institutions
of various kinds. First I am indebted to the scholarship of my academic
teachers in ways impossible to quantify. Then I am deeply obliged to
the published scholarship of many others over many generations, a debt
very imperfectly acknowledged in the citations and bibliography. More
often than not I cite a work only in order to disagree with it, a proceeding that may unfortunately mask the many times I have been positively
influenced by the same work. I must confess to being guilty of this academic misdemeanour in relation to Kyle McCarter's Anchor Bible
Commentary on Samuel. Inevitably I have not a few disagreements
with McCarter on the text and interpretation of the portion of Samuel in
question in this book, and I have found it necessary to say so, sometimes at length. That in itself is an inverted tribute to the significance of
his commentary. But I wish to acknowledge here, what may not be
apparent to the reader from this perforce negative engagement with his
ideas, that I have gained, and continue to gain, great profit from
McCarter's detailed and insightful commentary. Then there are also
many other works that have contributed to my thinking in a lesser
degree, in particular, a large number of articles and chapters of books
on 2 Samuel 7, which I have read over the years of my research. But
since they do not directly impinge on the text of this book, they have
not been cited, either in the notes or the bibliography.
My indebtedness to several institutions should be recorded: I have
had a small research grant each from the Universities of Southampton
and Exeter, and also from the British Academy. In addition, the two
universities have each granted me, at different times, a short period of
study leave to pursue the research and writing of this book. My thanks
also go to the Ecole Biblique and the Albright Institute in Jerusalem,
and the Pontifical Biblical Institute library in Rome, who each made me
12
welcome for brief study visits, and to Tyndale House in Cambridge for
a longer visit.
When a book has been as many years in gestation and in writing as
this one has, there are many individuals who have supported or contributed to its production. My fear is that, in duly recording here my
indebtedness to some, I will unintentionally slight those whose names
do not spring to memory as I write, but whose contribution has been no
less worthy of acknowledgment. To all I express my grateful thanks.
Nonetheless, I ought to record special thanks to the following, who
have read and commented on drafts of one or more chapters at various
times: Dr (now Professor) Ian Markham (an early draft of Chapter 5),
Professor Alan Millard (Chapter 7), Fern Clarke (Chapters 3-6), and
especially to Dr David Horrell and the Revd David Friend, who both
cheerfully read drafts of most chapters. Also to Professor David Clines
of Sheffield Academic Press, who with admirable promptness gave me
the benefit of his invaluable editorial experience, and to Dr Jonathan
Barry and Professor Ian Hampsher-Monk, who pointed me to some
helpful material on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political history.
For help with the proofs I thank David Friend, Geoffrey Bowstead and
the Revd Adrian Lee, whose eagle eye for the Hebrew saved a number
of errors slipping through. To Geoffrey Bowstead I am also greatly
indebted for the invaluable and thankless task of preparing indexes.
Needless to say, none of them is responsible for the final form of the
book, and errors and infelicities that remain are entirely my own responsibility. I wish also to acknowledge the vigilance of Vicky Acklam
and Sheffield Academic Press in seeing the book through the press.
Finally, since I express my general indebtedness to my parents in the
dedication, I take this opportunity to thank my wife for all her understanding and support in all the vicissitudes of preparing and writing this
book.
ABBREVIATIONS
1. Bibliographical
AB
AfO
AfOB
AHw
AnBib
ANET
AnOr
AOAT
ARAB
ARE
ARI
ArOr
ARW
BA
BBB
BDB
BHS
BWANT
BZ
BZAW
CAD
CAT
CBQ
ConBOT
CTA
CTAT
EBib
Anchor Bible
Archivfiir Orientforschung
Beihefte zur AfO
Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handworterbuch
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1959-81)
Analecta biblica
James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating
to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
3rd edn, 1969)
Analecta orientalia
Alter Orient und Altes Testament
D.D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia
J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt
A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (2 vols.;
Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1972-76)
Archiv orientdlni
Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft
Biblical Archaeologist
Bonner biblische Beitrage
Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs,
A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1907)
Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia
Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alien und Neuen Testament
Biblische Zeitschrift
Beihefte zur ZAW
Ignace I. Gelb et al. (eds.), The Assyrian Dictionary of the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago:
Oriental Institute, 1964-)
Commentaire de 1'Ancien Testament
Catholic Biblical Quarterly
Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament
A. Herdner (ed.), Corpus des tablettes en cuneiformes
alphabetiques decouvertes a Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 a
1939 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale Geuthner, 1963)
Critique textuelle de I'ancien testament
Etudes bibliques
14
EHAT
FRLANT
GKC
HKAT
HSM
ICC
IRSA
JBL
JSOT
JSOTSup
JTS
KAI
NRSV
OBO
Or
RB
RIM
-EP
-AP
SAHG
SARI
SEA
TAB
TDOT
ThWAT
VT
VTSup
WMANT
ZA
ZAW

Exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament
Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (ed. E. Kautzsch, revised and
trans. A.E. Cowley; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910)
Handkommentar zum Alten Testament
Harvard Semitic Monographs
International Critical Commentary
E. Sollberger and J.-R. Kupper, Inscriptions royales
sumeriennes et akkadiennes
Journal of Biblical Literature
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement
Series
Journal of Theological Studies
H. Donner and W. Rollig, Kanaandische und aramdische
Inschriften (3 vols.; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962-64)
New Revised Standard Version
Orbis biblicus et orientalis
Orientalia
Revue biblique
The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia
- Early Period
- Assyrian Period
A. Falkenstein and Wolfram von Soden, Sumerische und
Akkadische Hymnen und Gebeten
J.S. Cooper, Sumerian and Akkadian Royal Inscriptions
Svensk exegetisk arsbok
The Times Atlas of the Bible
G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament
G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theologisches
Worterbuch zum Alten Testament (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,
1970-)
Vetus Testamentum
Vetus Testamentum, Supplements
Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen
Testament
Zeitschriftfur Assyriologie
Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
2. Other Abbreviations and Symbols
[ ]
4QSama-b
CN
Numerals enclosed in square brackets give the reference

numeration of English Bibles where this differs from that of
the Hebrew Bible
Qumran MSS of Samuel from Cave 4
class noun
Abbreviations
DN
ET
LXX
MT
OL
PN
Targ. Jon.
15
name of a deity, divine name

English translation
The Septuagint Greek version of the Bible. Superscript letters
(thus: LXXA) refer to particular MSS traditions (for details see
the editions).
The Masoretic Hebrew text of the Bible
Old Latin translations
personal or place name
Targum Jonathan
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Chapter 1
THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 1:

DEFINING AND DELIMITING CONTEXTS
1.1. Defining the Title, Delimiting the Subject
I take it that what readers want above all from an opening chapter of a
book is a good idea of what they might be in for in reading the rest of
the book. Of course already the title should have given some basic indication of what the book is about. But titles are designedly brief, and
intentionally intriguing: the former quality may produce density of reference, the latter a certain coyness, and thus neither quality necessarily
makes for transparency of meaning. Five 'p'-wordswhat do they tell
the reader about this book, other than that its author has a weakness for
alliterative titles? The book as a whole provides the full answer to what
I intend by the terms, but readers deserve some preliminary account, in
order to assess whether the book is going to do the kind of thing they
are looking for.
1.1.1. What Are Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension ?
In order to explain these terms I need to start with yet another term
beginning with 'p', but a more everyday one: 'power'.1 To the best of
1. As with any everyday term, if one starts to probe what we mean by 'power',
it soon reveals itself as multivalent and context-dependent. What we are dealing
with here is the range of meaning the term may have in the context of social, notably sociopolitical and religiopolitical, relationships in community. Weber ventured
as a broad definition, 'Macht bedeutet jede Chance, innerhalb einer sozialen
Beziehung den eigenen Willen auch gegen Widerstreben durchzusetzen, gleichviel
worauf diese Chance beruht' (1947: 28), rendered in English as '["power"] is the
probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry
out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability
rests' (1978: 53). It is clear from this definition that Weber saw conflict as at least
latent within power.
18
my observation, societies whose world-view sets relationship to a god/

gods as fundamental, take it as axiomatic that the source of any human
power is the god(s). This power is as manifold in its expression as the
different needs of the society demand. Typically it is manifest, for
example, in the prowess of a warrior, the efficacy of a priest, the clairvoyance of a prophet, the perceptiveness of a wise person, the authority
of a ruler. Each manifestation of power is believed to have been devolved upon its possessor by (an appropriate) god. This understanding
leads to the situation whereby, when society recognizes the presence of
this power in a person, such a person is authorized to act on behalf of
the god(s), at any rate within the sphere delimited by the particular
manifestation of divine power recognized. Thus the warrior may lead
for the god(s) in battle, the prophet may utter messages of the god(s),
the wise person may reveal the counsel of the god(s), and so on, in the
general assurance that the activity of each will be accepted as a legitimate exercise of the divine power, and will evoke an appropriate response from the community.
But even from this very brief and purely heuristic account of differential claims to divine power within such a society it is easy to see the
potential for conflict. What if the warrior-leader claims divine inspiration to one course of action, the prophet a divine message directing
another, and the revered wise person divine counsel pointing to yet a
third? Clearly, ideally this should not happen, especially where all
claim legitimation from one and the same god, but in practice it does.
When it does, who is to prevail, and by what process will that be determined? In such a situation of conflict society must decide, explicitly or
implicitly, by design or by default, who ultimately speaks and acts on
behalf of the god(s), where the supreme power of mediation between
god(s) and humanity lies. Accordingly, partisans in such a conflict can
be expected to attempt to persuade the community to support one side
or another. Hence not only does the recognition of divine power in a
person or group accord such a person or group authority in the community commensurate with others having different manifestations of
the divine power, but it opens up to one person or to one group the possibility of lording it over all these others, by laying claim to primacy of
mediation, to being the supreme deferent2 of divine power and authority to the community.
2. For the meaning of this term, and my use of it in my discussion, see below
1.3.
1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1
19
Power and authority have always been prized above all things by
some, and in societies that accord unquestioned legitimacy to human
authority believed to be divinely empowered, it should come as no surprise to find that the sources of divine power and the marks of divine
legitimation are the objects of human quest, the cause of earthly conflict and disputation, and the subject of mis-worldly manipulative acts.
To add to acknowledged lordship effective control over its divine
source of legitimacy is to entrench one's authority beyond any normal
challenge. Those for whom such a situation prevails enjoy the highest
form of prerogative: the indefeasible right to exercise authority over all
others, to act without human restraint or challenge.3 Now through his
requisitioning of the Shiloh ark to his monarchic capital, as presented in
the narrative sequence we shall consider in detail below, David sought
3. Definitions of prerogative reflect the presuppositions of the term's definer.
Thus, in a seventeenth-century England racked by political turmoil and controversy
over the nature and extent of monarchic prerogative, Locke in his Second Treatise
of Government defined prerogative non-royally as 'th(e) power [soil, of the executive] to act according to discretion, for the publick good, without the prescription of
Law, and sometimes even against it' (Locke 1988: 160, 375), and again 'Prerogative can be nothing, but the Peoples permitting their Rulers, to do several things
of their own free choice, where the Law was silent, and sometimes too against the
direct Letter of the Law, for the publick good; and their acquiescing in it when so
done' (Locke 1988: 164, 377, emphasis as published). In the century before Locke
the royalist Sir William Staunford had defined it as 'a privilege or preeminence that
any person hath before another whiche as it is tolerable in some, so it is most to be
permitted and allowed in a prince or soveraine governor of a realme', with the
further entailment that 'the lawes do attribute to him all honour, dignitie, prerogative and preeminence, which prerogative doth not oncly extend to his own persone, but also to all other his possessions goods and chattals' (Staunford 1979:
Folio 5). It is notable that, despite their difference of approach, both hold prerogative to be definable solely as a matter of civil law and polity. On the other
hand, the high royalist understanding of prerogative in its strongest form anchored
the notion in the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, summarized by Figgis
under the following four propositions: (1) monarchy is a divinely ordained institution; (2) hereditary right is indefeasible; (3) kings are accountable to God alone;
(4) non-resistance and passive obedience are enjoined by God (1922: 5-6). Figgis
had earlier noted (1922: 4-5) that propounders of the doctrine in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries drew justification for some of its claims from the Davidic
kingdom. In essence, then, prerogative is the power to act without any external
restraint or direction. Within the frame of reference relevant to our discussion, as
such it belongs by right to God alone, and if it inheres in any human agency, it does
so only as devolved by God.
20
precisely to create, both for himself and for his descendants, this state
of affairs in Israel.
Yet if a persuasive challenge to the alleged divine legitimation of
such prerogatived authority, in whole or in part, can be mounted, then
those elements of the prerogative whose legitimacy are thereby demolished are shown up as nothing but pretension, the unwarranted exercise
of and/or claim to power or privilege without due authority. What
demolition more effective than a case irrefutably argued by the divine
legitimator himself, to which the chief pretender to prerogative fully
defers? The final section of our narrative sequence, 2 Samuel 7, develops exactly this situation between Yahweh and David. Here in unambiguous terms is established the supremacy of the divine prerogative of
Yahweh, who, for his own purposes, himself devolved upon David
specific power and authority, and here further undertakes to keep
devolving it upon his descendants in perpetuity. But at the same time
David's overweening royal pretensions are exposed and decisively
rejected by Yahweh, to be totally conceded by the king in his prayer.
This account of Yahweh's will for David and for Israel is presented as a
sovereign word of Yahweh mediated through the prophet Nathan.
Moreover, the way it supersedes and refutes Nathan's earlier, royally
coerced, affirmation of David's will patently marks this prophetic word
as supreme in its authority over the king. How 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29 develops and seeks to resolve the conflict involved we shall see in detail in
Chapters 3 to 6 below. How the text under discussion draws on wider
contexts of meaning we will consider in Chapters 7 and 8. Finally, what
further questions it gives rise to we will reflect on in our last chapter.
1.1.2. Why Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics?
The book's particular orientation to this question 'how?' explains the
presence of the remaining three 'p'-words in the title. The terms
'pragmatics', 'poetics' and 'polemics' label distinguishable, yet closely
interrelated, aspects of how the text works as a text.
Linguistic pragmatics4 deals with language in use, language as a
4. For a general orientation into various approaches to linguistic pragmatics

the reader is referred to Leech (1983), Coulthard (1985), Green (1989), Blakemore
(1992). For an extended account of language use as joint action of speaker and listener, writer and reader, which seeks to go beyond what it sees as the limitations of
linguistic pragmatics, see Clark (1996).
21
means of communication.5 Accordingly, basic to its concerns are the

reciprocal relations of a speaker and hearer, or writer and reader. Pragmatics understands that meaning depends upon context, and shows that
the context of meaning is more than the sum of the meaning of the
words in a text (its semantics) and their grammatical interrelations (its
syntax). Thus it occupies itself with questions of what makes a piece of
text as a whole intelligible to a reader.6 It is much concerned with how
the text creates and builds its own context of meaning, by means of reference back and forth within the text itself, by reference to other text
taken as available to the reader, and by reference to supposed states of
affairs in the world assumed to be known to the reader. From the complex interplay of these various forms of contextual reference the reader
constructs the implicatures7 of the text, and thus decides what the writer
intended to say.8
5. I am aware of Derrida's attempts, notably in the set of essays and responses
collected together in English translation in Derrida (1988), to deconstruct 'communication', 'context', 'intention' and other terms and notions employed in linguistic pragmatics (without his referring, to my knowledge, specifically to this
discipline under this label). However problematic and open-ended such notions
prove to be when probed (cf., e.g., 'But are the conditions [les requisits] of a context ever absolutely determinable?' Derrida 1988: 2), they are in this respect no different from any others used in human discourse. One notes that the problems he
exposes do not seem to deter Derrida or his followers from writing and publishing
text. In any case, as a pragmaticist I intend to use these notions in a context I
believe sufficiently determinable by my readers for adequate communication to
occur!
6. Most linguistic pragmatics deals with spoken much more than with written
text, but since our concern here is with written text, it is to the latter that I will confine my remarks.
7. The term 'implicature' (see Glossary) is used in pragmatics to refer to what
a hearer/reader takes to be the intended implication of an utterance or set of utterances. Thus it is much less formal a notion in linguistics than strict material implication is in formal logic.
8. Pragmatics demonstrates that a hearer's/reader's construction of authorial
intention is an ineluctable part of interpreting text, and that this construction is
context-bound. To give a very simple illustration, the utterance 'it's cold in here'
will be variously construed, depending on who is speaking to whom in what context, either as an instruction or a request to close windows, or to turn on the central
heating, or as an admiring compliment on the efficiency of a refrigerator, or an
indication that the death of the utterer is near, etc., or indeed as some combination
of these or of other possibilities. Each of the indicated interpretations is, in the
appropriate context, an implicature of the utterance.
22
Pragmatics, then, seeks to make visible how a reader constructs

meaning from a text, starting with the initial assumption, constantly
being tested and reinforced in the process of reading, that the text is
cohesive, that is, that it is capable of rendering up coherent meaning.
Pragmatics thus explains the process of reading as one in which readers
reconstruct what they assume an envisaged author9 intended to convey.
Now the mechanics of this process are of interest to the linguist and the
psychologist, but not ordinarily to most readers, who are adept at doing
it without the need to know what precisely it is they are doing. But
where one is attempting to read, as we will be, a text whose context of
meaning is very different from those upon which our subliminal reading processes have been developed and honed, there are advantages in
our asking explicit questions and seeking explicit answers to questions
we normally are not aware of asking and answering as readers.
Chapters 3-5 below will show how linguistic pragmatics can help to
formulate our questions clearly, and whether and how the text can give
us answers to them.
If pragmatics thus looks at what makes text cohesively intelligible,
bringing to light some of the normally subliminal psychological processing involved in a coherent reading of it, poetics looks at what
makes it affective, that is, what gives it the power to sustain interest, to
involve the reader emotionally and intellectually. Thus poetics is concerned with questions of structure and style in text, with the artistic
deployment of its linguistic elements to create a rhetoric. This does not,
however, mean that only intentionally artistic texts are susceptible to
poetic study. All text has poetics, whether used consciously or subliminally, whether well or badly executed. Ideological texts in particular
deploy poetics in pursuit of an effective rhetoric of persuasion. It is
accordingly in the interests of readers of such texts to be aware of the
poetic devices by which the envisaged author is seeking to manipulate
9. I use the term 'envisaged author' to cover the pragmatic notion that any
intelligible piece of text has one or more human author(s), whether present (as
normally for oral text) or not (as normally for written text). I reserve the term
'implied author' for those instances where written text explicitly or implicitly
makes the reader aware of a directive authorial mind. Broadly speaking, the 'envisaged author' is an element of a text's pragmatics, the 'implied author' may be a
feature of its poetics. Corresponding to each of these are 'envisaged reader', the
target audience envisaged by an author, and 'implied reader', a figure explicitly or
implicitly addressed by written text, but notionally standing outside the immediate
world it creates.
23
them. Thus I shall seek in my close reading of the stretch of text we are
concerned with here, to draw the reader's attention to how it deploys
poetic devices as instruments of persuasion. I shall give some account
of 'close reading', after we have considered the remaining 'p'-word,
'polemics'.
Whereas the preceding two 'p'-words in my subtitle designate recognized divisions of academic study, each with its own developed
methodology and terminology, the third, 'polemics', has not, to my
knowledge, been used in the same way to mark out a particular field of
study. I am using it here to refer to the ideological dimension of our
text, with particular emphasis on the element of ideological conflict10
the text generates, conflict between a view I take the text to be promoting, and another (or others) which it seeks to undermine. The conflict
concerns the scope and nature of the Davidic monarchy over Israel, in
particular, the proper relationship of the king (melek) to Yahweh, and to
Israel as Yahweh's people. Thus the polemics of our text are made
effective through its rhetoric of persuasion, an aggressive but subtly
developed rhetoric, kept latent in the earlier part of the text, to be made
patent in the final section. Since this polemic is directed into an ideological situation, much of which is taken as known to the text's reader,
but which is no longer known in the same way by modern readers,
Chapters 7 and 8 below will be devoted to explicating this presupposed
background, so far as the information available to us allows. But given
that ideological conflict is bound up with conflicts of power in society,
laying bare the polemics in our text also cannot well avoid attempting
some identification of what individuals or groups are implied as
espousers of the positions depicted, and speculating on what the envisaged author hoped to gain by his11 text. My final chapter will sketch out
some suggestions on these issues.
10. 'Ideology' and 'ideological' are terms which can be freighted with particular meaning, especially in the way Marxist analysis has used them to denote
systems of (allegedly) false belief, imposed by ruling elites as instruments of
oppression. I use them in this work in a much more general sense, to denote a
more-or-less cohesive set of ideas, beliefs or views, which a text or texts evince or
presuppose, with no necessary implication as to their truth-value, or as to their representing the views of anyone other than the author(s) of the text(s) in question.
11. I use the masculine form here and throughout, on the culturally strong
pragmatic presupposition that our author was male.
24
1.1.3. The 'p '-words as Defining my Close Reading

These three 'p'-words of the subtitle, then, make explicit the three most
important dimensions shaping my reading of the text. My 'close reading' in Chapters 3-5 will accordingly identify and interpret the discourse signals by which the author seeks to direct his envisaged reader
to construe the text in the way he intends, and explore so far as relevant
the external references which constitute a presupposed context of
meaning: these are the main pragmatic dimensions of the text. It will
also identify operative stylistic and structural features which give the
text rhetorical impact: the poetic dimensions of the text. From both of
these considerations will emerge a reading of the message of the text,
of its ideological intent: the polemic dimension of the text. The order in
which I have listed these dimensions reflects no more than a practical
order of consideration, and that only very roughly. The three terms
designate dimensions of the text that are reciprocally interdependent,
and any idea of a rigid hierarchy of successive methodological operations is quite inappropriate.12
Finally, under this head, let me make clear that I lay no claim in my
reading to be doing something entirely novel or exclusive to me. So far
as each is appropriate to the text in hand, all readers in the process of
reading any text address themselves to these dimensions of it, mostly at
a sublimal level. The best I can claim is to have consciously addressed
myself to all three in our text in a more systematic way than I have seen
elsewhere. Some readers of this text have reflected in detail on its poetics,13 many have considered, one way or another, its polemics,14 and all
have, to varying extents, discussed its pragmatics, without any of them
necessarily labelling what they did with any of these technical terms.
My intention here is to integrate all three approaches into a holistic
reading of the entire stretch of text delimited in my title, in order in
12. I still vividly remember how bizarre I found the rigidly hierarchical and
unidirectional exegetical system propounded over 20 years ago by Richter (1971), a
system which still seems to exercise an unacknowledged influence over a recent
study (Kleiner 1995) I have just reviewed for JTS (Murray 1998).
13. None more painstakingly and exhaustively than Fokkelman (1990); on
2 Sam. 7 see also Eslinger (1994).
14. Whereas the polemical 'message' of 2 Sam. 7.1-16 has been a constant
focus of scholarly attention in books and articles far too numerous to cite here, few
have seen this passage as part of a wider stretch of text having a polemical intent.
An earlier more integrated approach, but from a point of view quite different to
mine, may be found in Carlson (1964).
25
particular to lay bare its ideological polemic, since I believe that that is
its most fundamental and supreme raison d'etre. Hence my flagging the
major ideological conflict fuelling this polemic in the book's lead title,
as divine prerogative versus royal pretension.
1.2. Delimiting the Text to Be Read
If the reader is now adequately informed from the 'p'-terms in my title
about what she or he can expect this book to do, it still remains to show
why I have chosen to discuss a particular stretch of text delimited as
2 Sam. 5.17-7.29. The next section of this chapter thus will demonstrate how this stretch constitutes a definable unit within the story of
David in Samuel. The final section in this chapter, picking up on our
general observations from the first section, will sketch out in terms of
the chapters to follow, what it is about this particular unit that makes it
sufficiently interesting for extended discussion.
1.2.1. The Story of David in Samuel
The storyline in Samuel, despite its encompassing events spread across
something like a century of text-world time, displays a notable degree
of continuity. From the birth and early life at Shiloh of Samuel, the text
moves through an account of the enforced peregrinations of the Shiloh
ark, consequent upon Israel's defeat by the Philistines, then returns to
narrate a subsequent victory over the Philistines led by the now-mature
Samuel. Samuel holds centre stage in the inauguration of Saul as king
of Israel, and continues to figure prominently in the account of Saul's
rejection by Yahweh. But from his first foreshadowing as Yahweh's
replacement for the flawed Saul, David quickly comes to dominate the
narrative of Saul's ill-starred reign, replacing Samuel as the focal point
for religious sympathy in the story. The continuity of the story once
David enters it is even closer. From his youthful introduction to Saul's
entourage, through his career as a renegade from Saul's murderous
jealousy, to the denouement of events which sees him installed as king
of Judah and Israel, the reader follows a cohesive storyline which
brings to fruition Yahweh's intention for his chosen servant.
Nor in the subsequent narrative of David's kingship are there points
of such obvious discontinuity as to interrupt the smooth flow of the narrative, at least until we reach the final chapters of the text. Thus once on
the throne, David consolidates his position both internally and externally, with the establishment of a royal capital and royal shrine, the
26
begetting of royal progeny, the defeat of major external enemies, and

the neutralization of rival claimants. However, danger for David develops from dissensions among the royal progeny, dissensions which
inexorably entangle the king in a web of family and court intrigue and
revenge. The jealousies and ambitions aroused lead to two major rebellions, which put in jeopardy David's rule. Both are successfully suppressed, thanks to decisive and ruthless action by David's general,
Joab.
Up to this point the story is sufficiently sequential chronologically
and coherent thematically to draw the reader forward without difficulty.
Only when the reader reaches the final four chapters of Samuel is the
forward-moving continuity of the storyline manifestly broken by text
which reads less straightforwardly than hitherto. Part narrative, part
lists, part psalmic poetry, these chapters are in themselves neither temporally progressive, nor clearly located temporally within the story of
David's life. It is quite evident that this section does not deal with just
one occasion in the story of David, nor do most of its constituents relate
to incidents in David's career at the point reached by the narrative in
2 Samuel 20, but manifestly backtrack to several different earlier
stages. While this observation about the connection of 2 Samuel 21-24
to the rest of the text is sufficient in itself to raise interesting questions
of how and why this material breaks with the otherwise regular linear
continuity of the narrative, these chapters are not my concern here.
1.2.2. 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29 within the Story of David in Samuel
My interest is rather in an earlier stretch of text, 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29,
which does not present the reader with the same kind of problem, since,
on a first reading at any rate, it fits quite smoothly into the temporal and
thematic continuities of the story of David in Samuel.15 David has
already been installed as king of Judah (2 Sam. 2.1-4) and, after various
political machinations (2.5-4.32) which we need not detail here, also of
Israel (5.1-3). Moreover, he has acquired for himself a royal capital
(5.6-9). Not surprisingly at this point, the Philistines, whom the reader
of Samuel knows to be longtime enemies of Israel, and to whom the
reader also knows David to have hitherto owed politico-military allegiance, launch a pre-emptive attack against David. In two divinely led
15. The following discussion deals only with the cohesiveness qua story of the
events as narrated in Samuel, and draws no implications about their historical reality or their historical interconnections, if any.
27
and decisive thrusts David repulses the Philistines (5.17-25), thereby

creating for himself a breathing-space in which to prosecute his religiopolitical agenda. First, he brings into his new capital the ark (6.1-23),
and then projects for it a splendid new housing (7.1-3). But Yahweh's
robustly negative response to this initiative counters David's moves
with a further unfolding of his agenda for David and Israel (7.4-16),
humbly embraced by the chastened king (7.18-29). With this dialectic
interlude over, the breathing-space comes to an end, and David must
now get down to a systematic military consolidation of his kingdom
against external enemies (8.1-15), as well as the fulfilling of an obligation to Jonathan which at the same time conveniently neutralizes any
potential Saulide threat to his rule (9.1-13). Given then that we can see
how 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29 fits smoothly enough into the general continuity
of the David narrative in Samuel, why single out in this study just this
stretch of text for a close reading?
1.2.3. Delimiting the End of the Unit
No difficulty is encountered in ending16 the stretch of text with 2 Sam.
7.29, the verse which concludes David's prayer of response to Yahweh's speech provoked by David's broaching with the prophet Nathan
his projected new housing for the ark. For what follows after 7.29 in
our text in no way relates directly to the exchange between Yahweh and
David in 2 Samuel 7. In fact, the summary in 2 Samuel 8 of David's
victories against all his major rivals throughout his reign might have
been included at one of several other points in the text with no less
cohesion17 than it shows in its present position. Thus it could have been
16. In making and arguing for this claim I do not rule out that, for different reasons and with a different focus, one might argue for a wider stretch of text, including 2 Sam. 8, as a meaningful unit. Thus, e.g., Flanagan (1988: 361-63) sees a
chiastic structure in 2 Sam. 5.13-8.18, in which 5.13-16 corresponds to 8.15-18,
5.17-25 to 8.1-14, 6.1-23 to 7.1-29, a unit whose purported temporal progression
conveys a decisive increase in David's power. However, to my mind the heightened
inversions Flanagan alleges to underlie these chiastic correspondences are so
oblique and subtle as to suggest that they owe more to the sophistication of modern
reflective reading than to the intentions of ancient authors. Thus a more obvious
comparison for 5.13-16 than 8.15-18 is 3.2-5, as I indicate below (1.2.4). I believe
I can show more direct, concrete and persistent lines of connection within the unit I
am delimiting here, than Flanagan produces for his wider unit.
17. In arguing that locating 2 Sam. 8 at certain other points within the story of
David would not diminish its cohesiveness, I recognize that any such relocation
28
linked with the account of the Philistine victories in 5.17-29, a connection facilitated by 8.1 recounting a decisive victory over the Philistines.18 Or it might have been included between 2 Samuel 9 and 10, or
between 2 Samuel 12 and 13, both locations where the text signals
some temporal discontinuity.19 However that may be, it does not need
to follow directly on from 2 Samuel 6 and 7.
Then further, this lack of immediate continuity is reflected in the
style of 2 Samuel 8. First, the use of the rather vague indicator 'after
this' (p "HriK 8.1) to locate temporally the narration taken up in
2 Samuel 8 informs20 the reader here, as it has done also earlier in
2 Samuel 2.1, that what follows is not the immediate chronological
sequel21 to the preceding. Then also the different style of narration,
compact and summarizing in contrast to the circumstantially expansive
and dialogically enlivened narrative that immediately precedes in 5.177.29, reinforces the signal given by p "Hntt, that 2 Samuel 8 is moving
the story into a different phase. 2 Samuel 7.29/8.1, then, marks a
boundary point within the story of David in Samuel.
1.2.4. Delimiting the Beginning
The reasons for beginning the unit with 2 Sam. 5.17 require a little
more demonstration. First, several features of the text in 5.4-5.16 indicate that this also is a significant transition point in the story of David
in Samuel:
would nonetheless alter the precise nature of its cohesion, and its significance
within the ongoing story. But these considerations do not materially affect the point
I am making here.
18. Of course, such a location would have greatly affected the dynamic of our
stretch of text, but that is a different, though related, issue.
19. Both 10.1 and 13.1 begin with the temporally disjunctive p nn TH,
'some time later', and introduce narrative with no direct continuity with the
preceding.
20. My point here rests solely on what the text explicitly or implicitly conveys
to the reader, not on what may have been the order of events in a historical David's
time.
21. This chronological imprecision of the expression and its loose connecting of
episodes in narratives is also observable in most other instances of the use of
p nn, notably in Judg. 16.4; 2 Sam. 10.1; 13.1; 21.18; 2 Kgs 6.24; cf. also Joel
3.1 [2.28]. Only in 1 Sam. 24.6, 9 [5, 8] does the expression mark stages within the
same episode, thus giving the p a more precise and immediate reference.
29
(1) Chapter 5.4-5 interrupts the storyline with a summarizing

statement about the length of David's kingship, which is both
retrospective and prospective. Thus the reader is for the moment
lifted out of the flow of events as they unfold, to be given a
glimpse of the full panorama of David's royal career.
(2) Chapter 5.10 is a second summarizing statement, which offers
the reader an appraisal of the story of David as it has been told,
which the reader can recognize both as apt comment on what he
or she has read so far, and as a foreshadowing of the story's
future progress.
(3) Chapter 5.12 is a third summary statement, this time informing
the reader of David's own perception of how firmly established is
the favourable position to which Yahweh has brought him.
(4) Chapter 5.13-16 follows up with a list of David's new wives and
concubines, and of the male issue he fathered when ensconced in
Jerusalem. The wording of 14a strongly suggests that what follows is a listing of all David's male issue born after he established himself in Jerusalem, and thus summarizes information
spanning an undefined period into the future.
(5) A comparison of 5.3, 10-16, 17 with 3.1-5, 6 show a similar
technique of pause and appraisal before moving the narrative on.
Chapter 3.1 reflects prospectively on the inexorable rise of the
fortunes of David and the inexorable fall of those of the house of
Saul. To this 3.2-5 appends evidence of the burgeoning house of
David by listing the six sons born to David, and to the women of
importance he has married, at Hebron. Then 3.6, in picking up on
3. la, ends the brief pause and moves the narrative forward into
the territory surveyed in advance by 3.1. Similarly, but more
weightily, 5.1022 and 5.12 reflect on the heights David has now
reached under the guidance of Yahweh. Between them 5.11
sandwiches external attestation in the form of Hiram's embassy,
and 5.13-16 appends internal evidence, with a list of sons born in
Jerusalem to David, which no longer needs to cite their mothers:
it is now enough that they are David's offspring. Then 5.17 picks
up on 5.3b to move the narrative into its next stage.
22. Note also the use of a similar idiom in both 3.1b and 5.10a to describe
David's progress, a form of the verb "[^H + adjective.
30
Clearly, then, this combination of retrospective and prospective summaries and appraisals imparts to the narrative a strong sense of having
reached a significant plateau, where it pauses to survey both the distance it has already travelled as well as the way further forward. This
perceptible halt to the forward movement of the story of David contrasts strongly with the almost breathless progress of the narrative
hitherto.
Then second, with 5.17-25 on the other hand, the story gets under
way again with incidents which in themselves are a logical development from what the narrative has earlier told about David's and Israel's
relations to the Philistines, but which are nevertheless not an inevitable
turn the narrative has to take at this point. For since David's apprisal of
Saul's death in 2 Samuel 1, the Philistines have played no role in the
story, having been mentioned only twice, and that merely in passing
(2 Sam. 3.14,18). The narrative in the meantime has been occupied
with the inner-Israelite politics which placed David on the thrones of
Judah and Israel. All this means that the reader has not been primed to
expect the pre-emptive Philistine attacks in 5.17-25. Thus the narrative
here enters upon a new episode of the same story, one which recognizably marks a new stage in the continuing narrative.
These considerations are sufficient, then, to show how 2 Sam. 5.4-16
creates a major pause in the forward flow of the David story in Samuel,
whereas 5.17 initiates a new development in the story, thus making it a
boundary point within that narrative flow. But I have already established above that 7.29 is also a clear boundary point in the story, at the
other end of our stretch of text. If we now add to these arguments
which establish 5.16/5.17 and 7.29/8.1 as boundary markers within the
story of David the further observations that the stretch of text (5.177.29) which they demarcate does not itself contain pause markers of
equivalent weight, and that it does not at any point within it so clearly
change direction, then we have a good prima facie case for treating this
stretch of text as a narrative unit.
1.2.5. Structure and Cohesion of the Unit
The stretch we have thus delimited, however, falls into three easily
definable subunits: (1) David's repulsion of the two Philistine attacks
(5.17-25); (2) David's bringing of the ark to Jerusalem (6.1-23);
(3) Yahweh's projected house for David versus David's projected
house for Yahweh (7.1-29). Given that these three subunits have often
31
been treated by scholars in relative isolation from one another,23 the

case for treating this stretch as in itself a cohesive unit still needs to be
made. Here it will suffice to marshall enough evidence of significant
links between the three subunits to indicate that this claim has a reasonable basis in the text, and to leave it to the close reading of the text carried out in Chapters 3-5, and the overall discussion of the whole stretch
in Chapter 6, to vindicate the claim in detail.
Our first line of evidence consists in links made within the narrative
logic of the subunits, that is, that a subsequent subunit presupposes as
existing a situation whose coming into being is narrated by a preceding
subunit:
(1) David's plan to rehouse the ark within Jerusalem, the starting
point for the subunit 'house for David versus house for Yahweh'
(7.1-29), clearly presupposes the relocation of the ark to Jerusalem narrated in the preceding subunit (6.1-23). In that preceding subunit David set up the ark in a tent (6.17a), but by 7.2 he
has come to regard this housing as incongruously meagre.
(2) These two subunits are further linked through the connection of
7.la to 6.20a. Chapter 6.20a informs us that, having blessed and
dismissed the people (6.18b-19), David returns to bless his own
household. But he is baulked in the execution of this intention by
the fateful meeting with Michal at the very gates of his house
(6.20b-23). Chapter 7.la then takes up with David installed in his
house, but with no mention of his having blessed it. The motif of
the blessing of David's house does however return, but not until
the end of the section (7.29), where it has undergone a highly
significant transformation as a result of the intervening business.
Whereas these narrative logic links between 7.1-29 and 6.1-23 lie on
the surface of the text, those between 6.1-23 and 5.17-25 are rather
more implicit, and require reader's knowledge of things narrated a little
23. Usually 2 Sam. 6 has been isolated from both 5.17-25 and ch. 7, to which
practice Seow (1989), who links 2 Sam. 6 with 5.17-25, is a recent exception. In
particular, 2 Sam. 7 has endlessly been discussed with little or no reference to the
preceding texts, Carlson (1964) being a notable exception. Indeed, I myself also
began my research on 2 Sam. 7 alone, only somewhat belatedly recognizing its
interdependence with what has immediately preceded it.
32
earlier, as well as much earlier, in the text.24 In particular, the reader

needs to be aware
(1) that the ark had been a revered religious object at the influential
Israelite shrine of Shiloh (1 Sam. 3-4);
(2) that the ark had been captured by the Philistines, but had been
returned, under divine duress, to a small town in the JudaeoBenjaminite countryside bordering on Philistine territory, where
it had remained for many years (1 Sam. 4.1-7.2);
(3) that later David had become a vassal of one of the Philistine
lords (1 Sam. 27-30), a relationship not formally terminated in
the subsequent narrative up to 2 Sam. 5.17.
From this knowledge the reader can readily draw the following pragmatic implicatures:
(1) The Philistines were hardly likely to leave their supposed vassal
to consolidate unmolested his position as an independent king of
Judah and Israel.
(2) To remove the ark to Jerusalem was inferably advantageous to
David, not only in the internal religio-politics of Israel, but also
as a significant gesture of independence from the Philistines.
(3) This removal could only have proceeded when David was safe
from Philistine attack.
Thus these pragmatic implicatures drawing on elements from the earlier
story show how the narrative of David's decisive repulsion of Philistine
attacks in 5.17-25 is an essential logical prelude to that of his removal
of the ark to Jerusalem in 6.1-23.
Our second line of evidence consists in suggestive verbal and ideological links between the subunits, or in the conspicuous absence of
such a link where it might be expected. Here I will cite four indicative
examples:
(1) The apparently incidental statement in 5.21 about David and his
army taking up (DNCZn) as trophies the divine images abandoned
by the defeated Philistines resonates in the subsequent narrative
when 6.3,4,13 use the same verb of David's and the people's
24. Of course, some of the points that follow could be pragmatic, rather than
textual, presuppositions, and it is not in the end possible to make a clear-cut distinction. However, the fact that all the points listed are narrated or directly implied by
the text of Samuel strongly points to their being textually presupposed here.
33
taking up the ark from its place of sequestration.

(2) More striking still is the close similarity in language of 5.20 and
6.8, both centring around the verb flS 'break out, burst through'
in a naming aetiology, which thus pregnantly compares David's
reactions to the two divine actions made parallel to one another.
(3) The reader is twice told, in precisely the same words, within the
short subunit 5.17-25 that 'David consulted Yahweh' (in ^NBh
mrrn) over fighting the Philistines (5.19a, 23a). But the following narrative about the no-less-important matter of the removal
of the ark to Jerusalem records no consultation of Yahweh's will
by David, a silence made eloquent when Yahweh suddenly turns
David's plans vexingly awry (6.7-11 a).
(4) However in ch. 7, on the issue of rehousing the ark in a cedar
temple, the reader now finds David calling in the prophet Nathan
for 'consultation', but David's obliquely coercive approach and
Nathan's servilely perfunctory response lead to no genuine
disclosure of the divine will, which only comes from the ensuing
robust intervention by Yahweh himself.
The full implications of these connections, merely summarized above,
and of other relationships between these three subunits not mentioned
here will be developed in detail in the following chapters. However, the
foregoing considerations should have sufficed here to establish that the
text of Samuel demarcates 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29 as a cohesive unit within
the David story, and that, in singling out this particular stretch of text
for our extended study, we are being led by the text's own rhetorical
and literary indicators.
1.3. Prospect: Deferring the Difference
Before turning to the subsequent chapters in this book, my readers are
owed one final piece of general explanation. They will probably have
noted already from the table of Contents that the titles of most of the
book's chapters use a particular set of 'd'-words, variants of the terms
'deference' and 'difference', either as noun or corresponding adjective.
When they come to read the discussion they will find that the corresponding verbs are frequently used. There are two main considerations
which govern my use of this set of 'd'-words. In the first place the set
neatly articulates a thematic development fundamental to the stretch of
text under consideration, that is, that concerned with the vicissitudes in
34
the relationship between Yahweh and David during its course. Hence
the appearance of these terms in the titles to the three chapters of close
reading. In the first section of the text (5.17-25) David is, to all appearances, fully deferent with Yahweh, whom he sedulously consults and
punctiliously obeys, as our close reading of this section in Chapter 3
('David Deferent with Yahweh?') will show. However, Chapter 4
('David Different with Yahweh'), on the second section of our text
(2 Sam. 6), brings to light a nagging sense of difference and alienation
between Yahweh and David, as David's monarchic ambitions come
more and more to dominate his actions. This difference Yahweh dramatically unmasks in 2 Samuel 7 (as read in Chapter 5 'David and Yahweh: From Difference to Deference'), and thus brings the king to a
thoroughly deferential confession of the divine pre-eminence.
Butand this is the second reason for my choice of these 'd'wordsthrough this thematic development of deference and difference,
the text projects a particular ideological view. In its advocacy of an
indefeasible divine prerogative to which all human pretension to power,
not least that of Davidic monarchy, must defer, the text seeks to maintain, untrammelled and inviolable, the divine difference from humanity.
But at the same time the text promotes as supreme a particular deferent
(conduit, medium) between divinity and humanity, namely prophecy,
itself a particular form of divine empowerment of humans, to which
even kings must defer. The background to this ideological stance is
sketched in Chapters 7 and 8 below ('Yahweh and David through Difference and Deference 1, 2'), and the stance itself is probed in my final
chapter ('Yahweh and Israel: Deference of Difference'), where some
implications of this ideology are considered.
Thus the reader needs to be aware that in my chapter titles and the
discussion they epitomize, the verb 'defer' and/or its grammatical
transforms as appropriate may have any of three different senses: (1) to
put off, leave aside to another time, or to no envisaged time; (2) to
submit acquiescently to another; (3) to carry something down, through,
or over, to something or someone else, to mediate it. Admittedly, this
last sense is now archaic in English, but using it in my discussion
allows me to draw together in one set of cognate terms important ideological strands in our text, strands which constantly relate deference in
all three senses with difference. For clearly deference inevitably implies
difference.25 To put something off is to recognize, tacitly or explicitly, a
25. Readers may detect Derridean overtones in the observations in this
35
difference, and also to make a temporal difference. To submit acquiescently to another is to admit a difference in power and prestige. To
carry something through to another is to acknowledge a difference
needing to be bridged. But each sense of 'defer' also in some way seeks
to efface the difference in question. In putting something off one is
seeking to avoid difference by postponing facing and dealing with it. In
subordinating oneself to another one is attempting to obliterate difference through self-effacement. In mediating something to another one is
trying to reconcile difference.
Each of these strategies is apparent in 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29. Thus in
5.17-25 David is deferent (acquiescently submissive) with Yahweh,
because by so doing he gains from the powerful divine warrior-king
strategic victories over his main rival to hegemony in the region. But
this merely defers (puts off) to 2 Samuel 6 David's own pursuit of his
intentions to boost his monarchical power and prestige through control
of the ark and its god, manifestly a deep underlying difference with
Yahweh. Yahweh also defers (puts off) dealing with this difference to
2 Samuel 7, where he exposes it by deferring (mediating) to David an
authoritative statement of his will. David's total deference (acquiescent
submission) to Yahweh thence effaces the difference. But the question
arises as to whether this is a reconciliation of difference, or just another
deferral (postponement) of it. We will return to this question in the final
chapter.
There are two chapters to which the preceding account does not
directly apply. The first is the very next one. Its content is described by
paragraph. A persistent element in Derrida's deconstruction of language and
meaning is the interdependence of difference and deferral (postponement). If I have
understood him, his contention is that signification depends upon difference, yet the
establishing of any difference is endlessly deferred (put off) by a never-ending
network of differences. Derrida coined the term differ once, from the verb differer,
'to differ' and 'to defer', to be susceptible of both the senses 'difference' and
'deferral', because the French noun in standard use, difference, means only the
former. On this as a deconstruction of a key element in Saussure's linguistic theory,
cf. Derrida (1976: 23, 52-53, 56-57, 62-63, 66, etc.); and in extenso Derrida (1973:
129-60). My discussion avails itself of further ambiguities in the English verb 'to
defer' and cognate nouns and adjectives, not directly available in French. The
English verb 'to defer = to put off, postpone' is in French differer, but 'to defer = to
submit acquiescently to another' is in French deferer; the latter verb also has the
juridical meaning of 'to refer a case to another judicial instance', which is a
restricted and specialized example of the sense 'to carry down, through, over'.
36
a different 'd'-word, the verb 'to define', as in the title to the present
chapter. Its purpose is to define closely a Hebrew text to be read in the
subsequent chapters, the text whose ideological polemic I have characterized by the 'p'- and 'd'-words discussed above. Hence along with a
Hebrew text there is a set of detailed notes discussing major textual
points, which seek in particular to articulate the relationship between
text and rhetoric, and also an English translation. Thus, while the
chapter is integral to the argument and useful to the reader, it would be
tedious to read through as a whole. It will probably be more congenial
for the reader to refer back to it in relation to points that arise in the
chapters of close reading, where I have in fact included frequent crossreferences. But she or he may find it useful first to read the introductory
paragraphs to the chapter, explaining how the chapter integrates into
the overall project of the book, and to read through the translation,
before passing on.
The other is Chapter 6, in the title of which I have abandoned 'd'words for a different kind of wordplay. Here the expressions 'at home'
and 'at war' make crossplay between their literal senses relevant to the
plot of our stretch of text, where, however, the reverse order might have
been expected, and a figurative sense of each relevant to the thematic
development within our stretch of text, to which the order of the
expressions in the chapter title has more appropriateness. This chapter
summarizes the discussion from Chapters 3-5, and as such some readers may find it useful as an introductory conspectus on my overall
reading of our text.
Chapter 2
THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 2:

DEFINING THE TEXT TO BE READ
2.1. What Text?
Many readers may be wondering why a chapter to establish a Hebrew
text of 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29 is included in a book mainly devoted to a literary-ideological reading of the text. The justification I offer for the
tedium of text-critical discussion is simply that a close reading of a text
must be concerned with what text to read, as the most fundamental
pragmatic issue involved. True, the issue may be avoided by electing to
read one existing form of the text, say, the BHS text. But in arbitrarily
choosing to ignore all other versions of the text one is choosing to
ignore the fact that each version is itself a reading of the text, produced
within its own set of operative contextual intentions and constraints.
That this is so is clearest in the case of the version of our text to be
found in Chronicles, which is sufficiently similar in a number of
respects to count as a version of the same text as we are dealing with,
but is sufficiently dissimilar in other respects for it to be evident that
both how and why it came to be as it is depend on factors particular to
its own context. Thus in what is at many points undeniably a closely
related account, besides having frequent variations in wording from the
Masoretic Hebrew of 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29, 1 Chronicles 13-17 has
significantly reordered material, and prefaced or interspersed it with
other material, in part found elsewhere in Samuel, in part peculiar to
Chronicles. Hence this produces a significantly different 'reading' of
the text, even in those parts of it which are closest to 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29.
Now it is no part of my brief in this book to give a detailed account of
1 Chronicles 13-17 as a text.1 These few brief observations are
1. On the handling of material in Chronicles in general see the study by Willi
(1972).
38
intended only to show that to bring any part of this stretch of text to
bear on the textual reading in 2 Sam. 5.17-7.29 entails taking proper
cognizance, both of how the relevant part of 1 Chronicles 13-17
contributes to its rhetoric, and how the 'parallel' part of 2 Sam. 5.177.29 does the same in the stretch of text of which it forms part. To these
factors I have tried to give due consideration in my discussion below.
But what applies in a high degree to Chronicles applies also to the
translated versions, if in variable and different degrees. Every translation is an interpretation, a 'reading', produced in its own particular
context with its own set of intentions and constraints. Harder to detect
as these are, again one ought where possible to take appropriate account
of them in using a translation as evidence for a putative form of
Hebrew text.
Thus, besides the more obvious forward relationship between the
reading(s) of the text, understood as a set of intelligible symbols in
some degree objectively determinable (i.e. in text-critical terms), and
one's 'reading' of the text, understood as an ultimately subjective interpretation of the overall meaning of the set (i.e. in literary-rhetorical
terms), there is a less obvious reverse relationship. That is to say, what
we actually read as the putatively objective set of symbols is to a
significant degree determined by our expectations about the set fostered
by our 'reading'.2 Of the many possible implications of this statement
only one is relevant to what I want to say here. This is that textual criticism therefore cannot simply operate purely at the micro-level of the
word, phrase or sentence. For there is a rhetorical dimension to any
particular reading (text-critical), namely its unique contribution to what
the stretch of text is saying and how it is saying it (i.e. to the 'reading'
in literary-rhetorical terms). Hence I contend that an essential part of
making a decision about a textual reading is consideration of how it fits
2. Obviously, I cannot here attempt to mount a general argument to justify this

claim. Let me merely illustrate what I mean with two everyday features of our
reading practice: (1) the fact that readers often do not notice minor misspellings of
words in text because they subliminally read what the context has led them to
expect; (2) readers consciously and readily correct other evident slips on the basis
of the contextually required meaning, as, e.g., the text of The Times leader this
morning (3 July 1997) read, nonsensically, 'the Chancellor's pension' in a context
that clearly required 'the Chancellor's promise'. For a further illustration of a different kind see textual n. 5 below.
39
into the overall discourse of the stretch of text in question.3 Inevitably,

deciding this is a matter of 'reading', of interpretation. Hence this chapter affords me the opportunity, in determining the text to be read, to
give due attention to rhetorical considerations in relation to other textcritical evidence, and thus to show why they must be among the determinants of the text to be read. This discussion therefore both anticipates
my close reading of the text in the following chapters, and informs it, as
the numerous cross-references between this and the three following
chapters indicate.
Since, as I have already stated above, a translation is an interpretation, one way of mediating my 'reading' of the text is to offer a translation of it, as I do below. But the nature of this particular exercise means
that it enforces choices about meaning and forms of expression, choices
which inevitably exclude other justifiable, even desirable, forms of
expression with their particular nuances of meaning. Thus the translation given below is intended as no more than indicative of the range of
meaning I discern in the text, and it will be found at times that my close
readings in the following chapters include variant renderings, which are
better calculated to bring out the point I am making at that particular
juncture in the discussion.
2.2. Text, Translation and Notes
I note here the conventions I have applied to the presentation of the text
and the translation:
(1) Both text and translation indicate the normal chapter and verse
divisions. Chapter numbers appear in bold on the line, and verse
numbers in superscript immediately before the first word of each
verse. In the Hebrew text both sets employ Hebrew numerals,
whereas both employ Arabic numerals in the English translation.
3. I note that McCarter in his primer on textual criticism sets a pragmatic

consideration very like this as 'an important positive criterion' among a set of
'other rules' governing textual criticism: '(c) the appropriateness of a reading to its
context' (1986: 74). It is not always apparent how he applied this criterion in
reaching his own textual decisions for his Anchor Bible commentary on Samuel
(McCarter 1980, 1984).
40
(2) The major Masoretic verse divisions are indicated by the normal
signs in the Hebrew text. In discussion I use these divisions to
define parts of verses, according to the following schema: from
the beginning of the verse to 'athnah is designated 'a', from
'athnah to silluq 'b'; subdivisions of each of these by zaqeph
qaton are designated by a, (3, y, as necessary. Where possible I
have marked these in the English translation by use of the appropriate superscript English and Greek letters immediately before
the relevant part of the text. Only 'b' and P, y parts of the verse
have been so marked in the translation, since it is obvious that
anything from the beginning of the verse up to the 'b' is 'a', and
anything from the beginning or from 'b' to P is a, and so on. I
trust this system will allow non-Hebraists to determine which
parts of verses are under discussion. Occasionally the foregoing
system based on the Masoretic accentuation defines as the smallest subdivision a fairly lengthy stretch of text, which precision of
reference demands should be further subdivided. Thus very occasionally in references to the text I append a subscript Arabic
numeral to the Greek letter to delimit a smaller subdivision. It
would be more confusing than helpful to incorporate these markers into the text and translation printed below. Readers should be
able to guage from the relevant contexts which portion of text is
being thus delimited.
(3) The notes on the text are indicated, both in the Hebrew text and
in the translation, by a superscript Arabic numeral immediately
after the relevant single word, or final word of the relevant
phrase. The notes follow one numerical sequence for the whole
stretch of text.
(4) Text to be omitted from the Masoretic Hebrew text has been put
into square brackets [ ], text to be added, into curly brackets { }.
Round brackets ( ) are used in the translation to mark some of the
more interpretive wording necessary in rendering the Hebrew
into English.

2.2.1. Hebrew Text
41
42
43
44
45
46
2.2.2. English Translation

2 Samuel 5 17The Philistines heard that David had been anointed as
king1 over Israel ^so all the Philistines went up to search out David.
b
But David heard about it and went down to the fortress.2 18Meanwhile,
the Philistines had arrived ând deployed (their forces)3 in the valley of
Rephaim. 19David consulted Yahweh, asking him, ^'Shall I go up
against the Philistines? YWill you deliver them over to me?' bYahweh
said to David, 'Attack, Pfor I shall certainly deliver the Philistines over
to you.' 20So David came at them through Baal Perazim4 and David
struck them down there, and said, 'Yahweh has surged over my enemies before me like a surge of (storm)-water,' bcalling the name of ihat
place Baal Perazim (? = 'lord of storm-bursts'). 21They abandoned
there their divine images, band David and his men carried them off.5
22
Then the Philistines came up once again band deployed (their forces)
in the valley of Rephaim. 23David consulted Yahweh ând he said,
'You must not attack. bSwing around towards their rear6 and approach
them from the front of Bakaim.7 24But see to it that you act decisively,
as soon as you hear the sound of marching8 in the tops9 of the bakatrees7 (or on the summits9 of Bakaim7), bfor by then Yahweh will have
advanced ahead of you ^to fight against the Philistine forces.' 25David
did exactly as Yahweh had instructed him, and he struck down the
Philistines from Geba (?Gibeah)10 to the approach to Gezer.
6 !David mustered together again11 all the elite fighters of Israel,
thirty12 thousand of them. 2Then David began the journey, and all the
people who were with him, Pfrom Baal13 Judah,14 bto take up from there
the ark of God ôver17 which was invoked there15 the name 'Yahweh of
Hosts16 enthroned on the cherubim'. 3They mounted the ark on a new
ox-cart, Pwhen they took it up from the house of Abinadab in Gibeah
(or on the hill).18 bUzza and Ahio Abinadab's sons ^were leading the
cart,19 [4aa]20 p{Uzza was walking}21 beside the ark of God, band Ahio
was walking ahead of the ark. 5At the same time David and all the
house of Israel danced and made music before Yahweh ^with all kinds
of {instrument }s of wood and with songs,22 bwith harps, lutes, timbrels,
^sistrums and tambourines.23 6They had reached the threshing-floor of
Nakon24 bwhen Uzza reached out25 to the ark of God and took hold26 of
it ^because the oxen made it topple.27 7But Yahweh's anger blazed out
against Uzzah, ^so that God struck him down there [..],28 and he died
there âlongside the ark of God.29 8David was left fuming ^because
47
Yahweh had made a surge against Uzzah; bthe place is called Perez
Uzzah ('surge against Uzzah') ^to this day. 9David became afraid of
Yahweh that day, bas he pondered, 'How is it possible for the ark to
come to me?' 10So David, (now) unwilling30 to offer the ark32 of Yahweh sanctuary with himself31 in the city of David, bdiverted it instead to
the house of Obed Edom, a man of Gath. nThe ark of God remained in
the house of Obed Edom the Gittite for three months. bThen Yahweh
blessed Obed Edom and all his household.33 12It was reported to the
king David: 'Yahweh has blessed the household of Obed Edom and all
his possessions ôn account of the ark of God.' Y{David resolved, 'I
will bring back34 the blessing to my own house.' }35 bSo David went to
fetch up the ark of God from the house of Obed Edom to the city of
David with joyful celebrations. 13When the bearers of the ark had
moved36 six paces, bDavid sacrificed a bull and a fading.37 14At the
same time David strummed vigorously38 before Yahweh, bdressed in a
linen ephod. 15So David and all the house of Israel ^were bringing up
the ark of Yahweh, bwith ritual shout and horn-blast. 16This is how it
turned out:39 when the ark of Yahweh ^was entering the city40 of David
b
Michal the daughter of Saul, looking out of the window, saw the king
David twirling about and strumming hard41 before Yahweh, ând she
despised him in her heart. 17They brought in the ark of Yahweh and set
it in its appointed place ^within the tent David had pitched for it, band
David offered holocausts and shared sacrifices42 before Yahweh.
18
When David had finished Coffering the holocausts and the shared
sacrifices, bhe blessed the people pin the name of Yahweh of Hosts.43
19
David gave to all the people, the vast crowd of Israel,44 to man and
woman alike, one round of bread, one portion of meat(?),45 pand one
cake of pressed raisins apiece. bThen all the people went each to his
own home, 20and David returned to his home to bless it. bMichal
daughter of Saul came out to meet David, ând said {by way of salutation},46 'How he has got himself honour today, the king of Israel
whohas made constant exposure47 of himself today to the watching
serving-girls of his lackeys, Yjust like one of the dancing-men!'48
21
David replied to Michal, 'As subject of Yahweh {I dance49blessed
be Yahweh}50 who has chosen me above your father and your father's
house pto commission me as leader51 over the people of Yahweh, over
Israel!band I make joyful music as subject of Yahweh. 22Yes, and I
shall 'abase' myself52 even more than this, ô the point of becoming
lowly in my own eyes.53 bBut with the serving-girls of whom you
48
speak, with them let me increase my honour!' 23Michal the daughter of

Saul phad no child bto the day of her death.
7 !It was when the king was installed in his (own) housebfor Yahweh
had given him respite around him from all his enemies2that the king
said to Nathan the prophet, p'Look here54 now, YI am installed in a
cedar-house, bbut the ark of God pis installed inside tent-skins!'
3
Nathan said to the king,55 P'Every thing you have in mind go56 and do,
b
for Yahweh is with you.' 4But it happened that night bthat the word of
Yahweh came ^to Nathan saying, 5'Go and say to my subject, to
David57, P'Thus has Yahweh spoken: b'Is it that you will build me a
settled housed 6For I have never settled in a house, pnot since the day I
brought up the Israelites from Egypt58 Ytill the present day, bbut I have
been moving about în a tent-dwelling.59 7In all my dealings with all
the Israelites, was there ever a word that I spoke60 with any of {?
any (one) f r0 maii} the tribes of61 Israel pwhom I appointed to tend my
people, Israel,57 saying, b"Why have you not built me a cedarhouse?" '" 8So this is what you shall say to my subject, to David,57
"Thus has Yahweh of Hosts spoken: ^'7 it was who took you from the
sheepfold Yfrom (following) behind the flock bto become leader ôver
my people, over Israel.57 9I was with you everywhere you went, pand I
cut down all your enemies before you, bso as to make62 you a reputation as great âs63 the reputation of the greatest in the world, 10so as to
establish62 a place (of safety)64 for my people, for Israel,57 and to
plant62 him (securely), so that he may dwell62 in his place. ^He will no
longer be afraid, bnor oppressed any more by evildoers, âs he was in
former days, nfrom the time65 I appointed judges over my people
Israel. ^Thus have I given you respite from all your enemies.66 bMoreover, Yahweh68 (hereby) announces67 to you pthat a house (is what)
Yahweh6* will make69 for you. 12{So it will be that}70 when your days
are complete and you sleep with your fathers, ^1 will raise up after you
your own offspring (lit. 'your seed Ywhich will come forth from your
body')71, band I will firmly establish their72 kingship. l3[He12 will
build73 a house for my name, band I will firmly establish his royal
throne74 in perpetuity.] 14I will be a father to them, pand they will be
sons to me, bso that, when they commit iniquity, ^1 will punish them
with the same punishments as humankind (lit. 'with the rod of men
Y
and the strokes of humankind');75 15but my gracious loyalty will not
depart76 from them, bin the way that I took it from Saul ^who preceded
49
you.77 16But your78 royal house will remain sure in perpetuity before
me:78 byour78 throne ^will be firmly grounded to endure.' "' 17In accord
with all these words ând all this vision bso Nathan spoke to David.
18
Then David the king went ând installed himself before Yahweh, band
said: 'Who am I, my lord Yahweh,79 and what is my house, ^that you
have brought me to this point? 19But this is a mere trifle to you, my lord
Yahweh,79 P(for) you have also spoken of the distant future concerning
your subject's house, band this is the instruction of humankind(??),80
my lord Yahweh.79 20What more can {your subject} [David]81 say to
you,82 bsince you know your servant,83 my lord Yahweh?79 21On
account of your word84 and according to your intentions ^you have
done this great thing bin making (them) known to your subject.
22
Accordingly, you are great, my lord Yahweh:79 bfor none is like you,
and there is no god beside you, âs everything85 we have heard
(testifies). 23And is there any nation86 like your people, like Israel, â
single nation on earth bwhom a god came to redeem to himself as a
people, to establish a reputation for himself, in performing great and
awesome wonders to drive out nations before your people, whom you
redeemed to yourself from Egypt? 24You firmly established87 your
people Israel as your own people in perpetuity, band you, Yahweh,
became their God. 25So now, my lord Yahweh,79 êstablish88 in perpetuity the word which you have spoken concerning your subject and
concerning his house, band do as you have said, 26so that your name
^"Yahweh of Hosts, God over Israel",90 may be for ever great.89 bSo
your subject David's house pwill be secure before you. 27For you,
Yahweh of Hosts, God of Israel, have revealed this to your subject: P"a
house I will build you".91 bAccordingly your subject has taken heart ^to
offer to you ythis prayer. 28And now, my lord Yahweh,79 you are God,
ând your words are certain.92 bYou have spoken to your subject ^this
promise of good. 29And so be pleased to grant93 your subject's house
the blessing ôf always being before you: bfor you, my lord Yahweh,79
have spoken, pand by your blessing Ywill your subject's house be
blessed in perpetuity.'
2.2.3. Notes on the Text
Compare 1 Sam. 15.1; 2. Sam. 2.4, 7; 1 Kgs 19.15, and so on. Though
the consonantal text allows the possibility of reading an infinitive construct here (so Syriac and a Targumic text as also in 2 Sam. 2.4, 7), the
idiom 'verb ncto, PN as object, CN with *?, noun specifying sphere of
50
action with Î?' is guaranteed by examples involving "VXh 1 Sam. 9.16;

10.1; 1 Chron. 29.22; and K'rtfp 1 Kgs 19.16; compare also Isa. 61.1.
Instead of misnn ^K TT1 (5.17bp), 1 Chron. 14.8bp reads K2T1
DiT'3St7, presumably 'he went out to face (i.e. to oppose) them', the
expression 'ISi? N2T clearly having this sense in 2 Chron. 14.9a [10a].
As this usage appears to be confined to these two Chronicles texts, it
looks here like a case of the Chronicler substituting a suitable but very
general phrase for the specific but somewhat problematic reading in
2 Sam. 5.17. If so, the Chronicler appears to have taken the opportunity
thus to heighten the contrast made with the second confrontation:
cf. DiT~inN n^f! tf?, 'you shall not go up against them (directly)',
1 Chron. 14.14a|3, and n. 6 below.
3
$CD] niphal in a military context occurs here, v. 22 below, and Judg.

15.9. None of the three contexts is sufficiently explicit to make its
meaning clear, though we note that each concerns troops in pursuit of a
significant individual enemy (David here and 22 below; Samson in
Judg. 15.9). 1 Chron. 14.9b,13a(3read ICDtfSTl, 'marauded, plundered', ?
cf. LXX cruverceaav eiq ir|v KOiAa8a/ev IT] KoiA,a6i here and 22 below.
Despite this interpretation, the view that >D] niphal means 'raid, plunder' does not appear to be justified from the contexts of its usage: (a) it
is hard to see why a band with a specific mission to capture or kill a
targeted individual should be deflected into general plundering raids;
(b) even if this practice might be explained as a means of their support
in the field, no narrative point is served in mentioning so purely ancillary an action, either in Judges 15 or in our present context. Given the
general sense of 2ftD] niphal as 'be loose, spread out' the usage may
indicate rather the division of troops into a number of smaller units
which spread out in search of the quarry. ICDtC'D''! in Chronicles could
then be explained either as a misreading of 1tto]1 (so McCarter 1984:
151), or as the misconceived substitution of a more common for a rarer
term.
4
LXX EK TCOV ETtavco SioKOTtoov appears to have read D^lSf^] *?1?QQ.

More apposite to the context than McCarter's supposition (1984: 151)
that this envisages breaches in the wall of a citywhat city?is to take
8iaKO7ccov to refer rather to gorges in the surrounding hills, from which
51
water would surge out in the flash floods of the rainy season. See my
discussion in ch. 3 nn. 23-24, below.
5
LXX TO\)<; GEOIX; awcov here and DiTn^N, 1 Chron. 14.12a, may simply
be an alternative reading for DiTDiSU. However, 1 Chron. 14.12b, rather
than being a purely tendentious change, could have resulted from an
attempt to make sense of a badly preserved Hebrew version of LXX KOI
eXapoaav amove; Aa\)ei8 KCCI 01 av8peq 01 |iet' awoi), that is, reading
tftQ ISTlfcn Til -iDtn from a garbled version of "IB7K D'tfttfl TTI DNfen
[irWlQI?]. But if so, how the Chronicler read his garbled text was
moulded by his pragmatic presuppositions about how David would
have acted in the circumstances.
6
For MT DHnn *?K non n^n $b, LXX reads OUK ava(3riaei eiq
cmvavTriaiv amcov, ajioaTpeôt) arc' a\)icov, and 1 Chron. 14.14 MT
DiTûn 30H DrrnnK n^n ^; compare LXX. Wellhausen (1871: 166)
and others propose to follow LXX 1 Sam. 5.23 and read n^n $b
Dflfcnp'?, 'do not go up to engage them', as an appropriate and necessary limitation of the too-categorical n^DD $h> of MT, in view of the rest
of 5.23. However, several considerations tell against this: (1) the ex
hypothesi loss of DH^lp^ is not readily explicable in terms of the standard scribal errors; (2) the proposal does not explain the reading in
Chronicles; (3) in any case, it is doubtful whether Drwip1? provides a
clear antithesis to DiTinK ^K as desiderated: for this one might rather
have expected Dl}]1?.
This last consideration, in conjunction with the reading in Chronicles,
is also against the view that DnKIp1? is simply an addition intended to
make the contrast (cf. CTAT, 241). I suspect that from a straightforward
reading n^fl tib, first DiT^J) il^n $b was generated by dittography;
and then from that, in the (pre-)Vorlage of LXX 2 Sam. 5.23 and in the
Vorlage of 1 Chron. 14.14ay, DiT"inR *7 H^H ^ resulted by
haplography between DrrÛ and Dmn *7. In the Vorlage of LXX 2
Sam. 5.23 the latter reading eventuated in the contextually more
intelligible Dn^lp^ nÛfl K1? = OVK avcxfhiaei eiq owavcriaiv atticov,
whereas in 1 Chron. 14.14ay a different process of further haplography
within DmnN *? (cf. MSS of 2 Sam. 5.23 MT) led to the reading
DmnK n^^n K1?. Finally, both the lost non and the original dittograph
DiT1?!? were restored in these texts, giving rise to DnîJQ 30H in the
Vorlage of LXX 2 Sam. 5.23 and in MT 1 Chron. 14.14ay. This
52
admittedly complicated process is highly conjectural, but in providing a

plausible explanation of all the main readings it strongly supports the
balder text of MT 2 Sam. 5.23. Finally, the observation that rhetorically
nÎtfl $b simpliciter nicely balances the nÛ of Yahweh's response to
David (2 Sam. 5.19ba) in the first encounter with the Philistines provides a further reason to stay with the reading of MT here. On the poetics of this balanced contrast see 3.2.3, p. 100.
7
Without the article in v. 23, D'fcOD is most naturally taken as a place

name (so McCarter 1984: 155-56). However, in the next verse ''GJKI
D^fcOUn plays on the common reference of Q'fcOD, probably to some
kind of tree (contra McCarter 1984: 155-56), a grove of which, growing
in the locality, perhaps gave the place its name. Note that, as with the
narrative of the first incident, the name of the locale of this incident
thus also becomes significant for the action. D^fcCQil, 1 Chron. 14.14, is
probably assimilation to the form in v. 15.
8
In accordance with its immediate context I take Hli^ here to refer to

Yahweh's theophany in battle, on the basis of 7S3X II to K2T in Judg. 5.4;
Ps. 68.8 [7]; Hab. 3.12-13; all of a saving divine theophany in battle.
LXXLMN read wu cyuvaeiajj-OD 'of the hurricane', that is, probably reading n~]I?O. It is possible that n~l#0 may be a genuine alternative reading,
since "1170 occurs in theophanic contexts; note especially Zech. 9.14;
Isa. 29.6; Jer. 23.19 = 30.23, and the storm wind in general is a common form of divine theophany in the Hebrew Bible (Exod. 15.8,10;
Ps. 18.16 [15], etc.). For the probable role of a storm theophany in our
text see the discussion in 3.2.1, 3.2.2, especially n. 23. However, the
similarity of the two Hebrew words suggests that one may be a 'misreading' of the other. Given that hearing the noise of a 'hurricane'
blowing in a grove of trees makes for a more direct conceptualization
of the theophanic metaphor than that of hearing the sound of the divine
warrior's 'marching' in the same, on the principle difficilior lectio potior I assume that it is JTltfO which is therefore the misreading of rniES,
and accordingly retain the latter.
9
As my translation indicates, the construing of D^ZOn ^\K~\ here is

ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so. CDfcO, 'head', may denote the
summit of a rise or the top of a tree, hence D^fcOSn ^N"! can equally be
either 'in the tops of the bakd1 -trees', or 'on the summits of Bakaim',
53
with the definite article in the latter case retained in a place name which
originates from a common noun, as with, for example, niD3n (see the
instances cited in n. 18 below). Given the likelihood of the place name
arising from a grove of eponymous trees growing on the summit(s) of a
hill or group of hills overlooking the vale of Rephaim, either interpretation is possible. For the poetics of this see 3.2.3, pp. 101-102.
10
LXXa7io Tapacov 1 Chron. 14.16bp pjnriD, 'from Gibeon'. Since

Geba lies about 6 miles north-north-east of Jerusalem, whereas Gibeon
lies about the same distance north-north-west, Gibeon has been the
preferred reading of most moderns, as fitting better into the topography
of the text, since the valley of Rephaim lies to the west and south-west
of Jerusalem. But (1) the reading pjn3 may easily have arisen from, and
then been preserved by, precisely this kind of subliminal readerly processing; (2) given the general meaning of IH3, 'rounded, convex', and
its use elsewhere as a place name associated with hills, it is possible
that 'Geba' here designates yet another town of this name, not referred
to outside of this context; (3) however, a reading nins, 'Gibeah',
though not attested in any of the texts, is also possible, given the general confusion of place names from the root IH3 (cf. 1 Sam. 13-14!).
Indeed, this last possibility would better fit both our context and its
topography than either of the foregoing. For 6.3(4) below almost certainly locates a Gibeah at Baal Judah = Kiriath Jearim, which is itself in
a direct line between the plain of Rephaim and Gezer, the extremes
given by 5.17-25 for David's action, and in the vicinity of both Baal
Perazim and Bakaim as determined by our discussion: see n. 18 below,
and ch. 3 nn. 23, 24, 40, and compare the front end-paper map in TAB.
Given the significance of Gibeah in Baal Judah, as the locale from
which the ark is removed to Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 6, a rhetorically
forceful point would be made by a reading which noted David driving
the Philistines from precisely there back to their heartland.
n
lir, 'again' is supported by all the main witnesses, but has been
excised by many as not making sense here, on the grounds that it has
been attracted from 5.22 into the opening of 6.1 owing to (1) the
graphic identity of *]D1 = *]0fon 6.1 with ^0*1 = Ôi'l 5.22; (2) the frequency of "111? with the latter verb; (3) the influence of the similar
opening to 5.22; compare, for example, Wellhausen (1871: 166),
54
McCarter (1984: 162). However, for the possible significance of T1D

here, see below 4.2.1, pp. 114-116.
12
LXX coq ep8o|UTiKOVTa, 'about 70 (thousand)', that is, DTatf for MT

DÊ?, one of the numerous numerical disparities between MT and LXX
text traditions.
13
MT rmrr ^mo LXX cmo TCOV otp%ovtcov Io\)6a Targ. Jon. tmpQ
n~nrp ITHl Peshitta mn gbf dyhwdh all take Ûl to refer to people.
The notion of David's having invited notable citizens to join in his
ceremonial removal of the ark to Jerusalem is in itself quite intelligible,
but, given the all-Israel significance of the act especially for his newly
acquired rule over the North, it would be rather pointed for the text to
imply that Judaeans only were invited, which is, in any case, excluded
by "TtOtzr rPlto 5aa. Further, such a construction of the text leaves DCZJQ
'from there' with no contextual referent, since it can hardly refer back
to 5.25, because (a) 6.1 begins a new episode and thus adverbial
anaphora back to the preceding episode would be opaque; (b) in any
case "1W "]tQ 1JJ {nJJnJQ 5.25 does not provide a perspicuous referent
for D2J. It is accordingly better to take rmiT ""înQ as a place name.
However, since in all other instances of place names of the form 'Baal
PN' ^m is singular, I read miiT ^ma and take ' in MT ^ma as a
dittograph from rmrP (with Wellhausen, Driver, etc.). This will then be
another variant of the name for the place also called rfpin 'Baalah'
Josh. 15.9, 10, 11, 29; 1 Chron. 13.6; ^JO mp 'Kiriath Baal' Josh.
15.60, 18.14; Dnir mp 'Kiriath Jearim' Josh. 9.17; 15.9; 1 Sam. 6.21;
7.1-2; 1 Chron. 13.5-6. Thus I see no reason (pace Wellhausen,
McCarter, etc.) to delete the D in "Pino, since the reading of MT shorn
of the " dittograph is intelligible, and this view proposes the minimum
of textual corruption.
14
1 Chron. 13.6 reads mirr1? "itiN D'~)IT mp *7K nrfrjn. This seems to
be an expansive text intended to make clear the identity of the place
involved, perhaps particularly because only the name Kiriath Jearim
was used in the narrative about the deposit of the ark there (1 Sam.
6.21; 7.1). Since Chronicles does not include the latter narrative, this
expansion may be part of the author's source, rather than his own work.
On the other hand, this version makes Baalah/Kiriath Jearim the goal
of David's 'going up' here rather than its starting point. But this is a
55
logical necessity of the ordering of the narrative in Chronicles, which

presumably locates David in Jerusalem still (cf. 1 Chron. 11.4-9;
11.10-12.41 [40] is a lengthy backtracking parenthesis) when he assembles the leaders and people to bring up the ark (13.1-5). Whereas the
Samuel narrative envisages this act as a direct outcome of David's campaign against the Philistines, set in motion on his way back to Jerusalem, the Chronicler's account has postponed the campaign to
between the abortive and the successful attempts to bring the ark to
Jerusalem (14.8-17).
15
Many MSS read Dtf? here, a reading I accept, for reasons which will
become clear. 1 Chronicles 13.6 has this phrase at the end of the sentence following D'O'HDn, in the place where VÛ, not represented in 1
Chron. 13.6, appears in 1 Sam. 6.2. On this positioning, and without
VÛ, the preferred referent for "ICJK in Chronicles must be miT not "pIK
(as, e.g., in NRSV). But by reading Dtp sense can hardly be made of the
phrase. Hence it is tempting to suppose a haplography with the following 1 and read IQtp, 'whose name is invoked'. But this alone is still
awkward, and it would be better either to read DttJ, 'who is invoked
there', with a number of MSS, or, better still, to suppose haplographic
omission of 1ft> and read (ITDT'l) D> 1Q$, 'whose name is invoked
there'. This DC? then picks up on the earlier D$Q and refers to the shrine
at Baalah 'to bring up from there the ark of God, that is Yahweh,
enthroned on the cherubim, whose name is invoked there'. The resultant emphasis on D$ here in Chronicles fits with the emphasis put on
Baalah/Kiriath Jearim by the repetition in 13.5, 6 and the ponderous
form of identification in 13.6. The point is to make clear that, despite its
name, this shrine where the ark was kept was devoted to the cult of
Yahweh. Now it seems to me that the same point is being made in a
more condensed wording in 2 Sam. 6.2, where the town is only called
rmiT 'T'in, and that this is the point of HD here. As so often, Chronicles
makes rather more of something left implicit in Samuel-Kings.
16
mtQJ$ is absent from 1 Chron. 13.6b, but is attested to by the versions

here. It is also absent from 1 Chron. 16.2b, 17.25, but again attested by
the versions in the parallel passages 2 Sam. 6.18b; 1.21 a. The title
mtO2J mrr, 'Yahweh of Hosts', only occurs in Chronicles in 1 Chron.
11.9 (// 2 Sam. 5.10); 17.7, 24 (// 2 Sam. 7.8, 26; but cf. 27). Other
instances in Samuel-Kings have no Chronicles parallel.
56
17
The placing of V1?!? here at the end of a longish relative clause produces distant and awkward pronominal anaphora to ]TM via "itfK, but is
probably due to D2? occupying the slot that V1?!? might otherwise have
occupied. The versions support the invocation of the divine name
'over' the ark as in MT here, as against the somewhat different representation in 1 Chron. 13.6b: see n. 15 above.
18
MT niOJQ is usually rendered 'on the hill', but it could just as easily
be construed as a place name 'in Gibeah'. For the article with this term
as a place name see Judg. 19.13-16; Judges 20 passim, etc. I suggest
above n. 10 n#33 as a possible reading in 5.25, and take it as a reference
to the place indicated here. Such a reading would make the places cited
in 5.25 as the limits of David's drive against the Philistines thoroughly
pertinent to the narrative in the present chapter.
19
The Chronicles parallel is considerably shorter here: (1) 1 Chron. 13.7

does not read inN&n, runn "ltf, or mrntf sri, all of which are attested
by LXX 2 Sam. 6.3; (2) there is no equivalent to any of 2 Sam. 6.4, not
even to the part attested to by LXX. The lack of the explication 'the
sons of Abinadab', which leaves the two drivers named inadequately
defined for the reader, as well as the lack of the circumstantial clauses
locating each in relation to the ark (2 Sam. 6.4 as restored), clauses that
provide further significant explicatory information, strongly indicate
that the Chronicles text is abbreviating detail not germane to its
purpose.
20
The text enclosed in square brackets is not to be found in LXXB here,

and is an obvious dittograph of text from 6.3, which results both in
questionable syntax in 6.4a (distant anaphora for the suffix in lilRfen),
and in an illogical utterance 'they took it (scil. the ark of God 6.3a) up
from the house of Abinadab on the hill along with the ark of God'!
21
The words in curly brackets, or something like them, appear to have

been lost: (1) Syntactically, the combination p"lN D# rftatfn HN
QTT^Kn, '(Uzza and Ahio... were driving) the cart with the ark of God',
strikes one as very unidiomatic and unlikely in Hebrew: a much more
likely way to put this in Hebrew is ITÛ DM^n ]1"l "I0K n*?3i?n n,
'the cart on which was the ark of God'. (2) From the narrative point of
view, as MT and the versions stand, the text makes a point of locating
57
the position of Ahio vis-a-vis the ark, but does not do the same for
Uzza. Yet in vv. 6-7 it is Uzza's position next to the ark (note ]1~IN DU
QTI^Kn 7bp precisely as in 4a(3) which proves fatal for him, whereas
Ahio and his position play no further role in events and are not mentioned after 4b. Thus, narratively speaking, it is virtually certain that the
text included a statement locating Uzza in terms similar to the existing
one that locates Ahio. (3) Rhetorically, the force of 7b(3 is much
enhanced if the identical phrase in 4ap has already brought Uzza into
close but unthreatening proximity with the ark.
LXXL reads Km oa between aw ir\ Ki(3coTco and Km 01 a8eX(|)oi
awoi) (i.e. between 4a(3 and 4b), and adds also (KQI) EK 7cX,ayicov
between eujtpoaGev and TTJ<; Kiporcoi) in 4b. Pace McCarter (1984:
163), however, it is difficult to attempt to reconstruct a Hebrew original
from this text, not least because euJtpoaOev (KCU) EK TiTtayicov TTJC;
KifkoTOi) is impossible to retrovert into Hebrew as it stands, since in
Hebrew "OS1? = euTipooGev requires a separate determinant. Further eK
rcXcryicov normally renders Hebrew "HQ, only once does it render n&I
(2 Sam. 16.13) which McCarter opts for here. But one can at any rate
say that LXXL here witnesses to a mention of Uzza in 4af}.b as our discussion above desiderates, and evidently locates (an) attendant(s) beside
as well as in front of the ark. The proposal I have adopted, suggested
over a century ago by Thenius (1842, 21864 ad loc~), is textually the
simplest and rhetorically the most effective.
22
MTD^-nn ^jj ^n, 'with all kinds of cypress woods'; L X X e v

opyccvoic; T|p|Lioa|a.evoi<; ev i^Xî Kai ev cp8ai<; = ? Ti?3 3î? ^DB;
D'TCJrn compare 1 Chron. 13.8 nn^Dl W 'PDD and 2 Sam. 6.14a. LXX
evidently conflates the variants MT 2 Sam. 6.5ap and MT 1 Chron.
13.8a, but ev opyavon; T|p|ioo|a,evoi(;, which recurs in 6.14 below, is
difficult. Despite 6.14 I am not convinced that this represents TU ^DH
(so Rehm 1937: 26 i.2; McCarter 1984: 163), since this could have
been expected to produce either ev opyavoiq ICT%I>O<;, as in the Lucianic
reading in 2 Chron. 30.21 (LXX B>A do not represent Ttf there), or ev
opyavoic; tampon;. I suspect rather that LXX here has read some form
of the root 32SU, 'to fashion, shape' and chosen to render with the nearest equivalent Greek word compatible with opyavov. My text assumes
haplography of *?D, and reads D'TIZDI with 4QSama, MT 1 Chron. 13.8
and LXX. 6.5a is a summary phrase, to which 6.5b adds details of the
various instruments of wood.
58
23
For D^tol D'tfDIHnm 1 Chron. 13.8 reads mi^mi D'HÔm,

'with cymbals and trumpets'; compare 1 Chron. 15.19-24 for David's
appointing musicians to play these instruments, along with D^S] and
m"l]D, in the cult for the ark in Jerusalem. These two occur together, in
the reverse order, also in 1 Chron. 15.28; 16.42; 2 Chron. 5.13; DTtea
otherwise occurs in Chronicles in combination with m~l3D1 D^Zl] (cf.
6.5a) 1 Chron. 15.16; 25.1, 6; 2 Chron. 5.12; 29.25. 1 Chron. 15.19
defines DTIÎSQ as instruments of brass, and Num. 10.12 prescribes silver for making rrnii^n. Thus the Chronicles reading here (cf. also
4QSama) probably assimilates to later cultic practice, whereas I suspect
the Samuel reading may reflect an earlier cultic restriction to wooden
instruments.
24
MT I'D], 1 Chron. 13.9 ]TO, plus a bewildering number of variants in

the versions, including some half dozen or so in the Greek versions
alone. All the Greek readings are forms of a proper name, only the Targum and Syriac among major versions evidently construed ]"D] as a
participle here, though they have been followed in this by a number of
moderns. But 'a ?firm/?permanent threshing-floor', unless it is taken to
be pragmatically presupposed that such a place is a natural station on
the ark's journey (a presupposition for which I know no evidence), is a
puzzling way to specify the location of Uzzah's sudden death: what is
the point of the adjective? In fact a personal name is to be expected (cf.
2 Sam. 24.16), and if one is to deviate from the form found in MT here,
then rather than ]113 (McCarter 1984: 164 following 4QSama) otherwise
unexampled, one might conjecture "[JO, hypocoristic of YPDJD; compare
2 Chron. 31.12, 13; 35.9 kethib, where it is a personal name for two
Levitical leaders, in the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah respectively.
This form could readily give rise to the variants found in the versions,
though admittedly it is not documented as a reading here by any of
them.
25
This appears to be the only instance of the ellipsis of T from this

idiom in prose, though there may be a poetic instance in the even more
compressed 2 Sam. 22.17 = Ps. 18.17 [16]. I think one should resist, for
good rhetorical reasons, the temptation to restore IT DK here, despite
the unanimous testimony of the versions, 4QSama, and 1 Chron. 13.9b.
The addition of IT HN before DTI^n flltf ^K considerably weakens
the impact of the latter, whereas the ellipsis heightens its impact by
59
placing it in the position where IT HK would be expected, and thus

demanding increased processing effort from the listener/reader. The
Chronicles variant avoids the problem by postponing the object of
Uzzah's action until after the next verb: see next note.
26
1 Chron. 13.9 ]l"ln HK TH^, 'to take hold of the ark'. LXXBA here
apparently have a conflate tradition: Kdiaoxeiv auTrjv Km eKpaTT|crev
aiyrnv, and TOD Kaiaoêiv avrrjv at the end of the verse. LXXMN have
only Kaiaaxeiv cwrnv. (TO\>) Kaiao%eiv a\)TT|v is derived from the
textual tradition found in MT 1 Chron. 13.9 (so Rehm 1937: 26, 27), but
rhetorically this is a weaker text than MT 2 Sam. 6.6. For the latter
makes a point, not only of Uzzah's stretching out towards (^K not Û,
pace McCarter 1984: 164) the ark in order to take hold of it, but also of
his actually grasping hold of it. McCarter's translation of 6.6b 'Uzzah
put his hand on the holy ark to steady it' (1984: 161, my emphases) is a
justifiable rendering of neither the locution ^/^K T Fl^tt?, nor the locution n NIK.
27
Read 1M with LXX; compare Targum, Syriac. MT IBQtf, read both

here and in 1 Chron. 13.9, poses some difficulties of construal: (1) the
pronominal anaphora is uncertain, since the only explicit contextual
referent, 'David and all the house of Israel' from 6.5a mediated via
IKin 6a, is somewhat distant. (2) A logical alternative referent is the
two drivers Uzzah and Ahio, but Uzzah has been mentioned alone in
6b, and Ahio not since 4b, prior to 'David and all the house of Israel' in
5 a, rendering such a reference even more problematic for the reader. (3)
If "Ipnn were the intended object of the verb, it is lacking the usual
object marker fltf. Thus I take "lp3n as intended subject of the verb,
and, as there is no justification for giving QQ$ an intransitive meaning
such as 'stumble', I read 1CDQ& as third masculine singular verb with
third masculine singular object suffix referring to DTI^Nn "[TIN.
28
MT ^H ^ is very dubious: LXXB has nothing corresponding, but

LXXAL has em (it]) TcpOTieteig 'for rashness', ? reading "l^n ^D, which
assumes haplography in MT of 1 with the following no"*"). But it is not
easy to see how this word may be derived from the root n^CJ, which has
rather the opposite sense. Targum Jonathan appears to have read something similar, interpreting the root with the Aramaic meaning 'go
wrong, err'. 1 Chronicles 13.10ap reads ^S IT n'PEJ 10K 'Pinnm
60
fTWI, 'he struck him down because he stretched out his hand against
(?towards) the ark', which many assume here as the original, and of
which MT ^fin ^V are the fragmentary remains: cf. NRSV here. The
Syriac '/ d'wSt 'ydh wmyt perhaps reflects a simpler reading IT n^ttf *?J?
to much the same effect. However, on purely textual grounds it is
difficult to see how such a straightforward text, if original, should have
become so mutilated. Then second, on discourse grounds, while the
explanation given by this clause fits well into the Chronicles' account
of this incident, it does not cohere well with the account in our present
text: on this see below 4.2.1, pp. 125-26. Finally, in terms of the
rhetoric of the texts, DTT^Kn D$ ITID^ 2 Sam. 6.7a(3 evocatively parallels 111 DCZJ DD'1 5.20a2 (see below 4.2.1, pp. 127-28). This nuance is
lacking in Chronicles, which does not read DC2J in 1 Chron. 13.10ap, and
which in any case reverses the order of the two passages, thus losing
the irony of the reference back. I suspect, given this parallel and the
absence of anything corresponding in LXX B , that îZ?n *?!? is the
mutilated remains, either of ~I$K *?$ inadvertently copied here from
6.8ap, or of a textual conflation from 1 Chron. 13.10a(3.
29
LXX adds evcomov to\) OEOD; 1 Chron. 13.10b reads D^N '3S1?
instead of DVfttfn ]T1K DS. Pace Wellhausen (1871: 168) I stay with
MT here, since it is difficult to see why in the one case HIT "OS1? should
have dropped out, or in the other it should have been replaced by D^
QTfptfn ]T"!K. In any case, the latter is a more graphic representation,
which links better with v. 4.
30
1 Chronicles 13.13 TOil 8*71, terser and less characterful, perhaps

intentionally avoids attributing unworthy motivation to David.
31
This is the only biblical instance of the preposition ^K with "110 hiphil.
I take it as the transitive equivalent of ^K ~110 in the sense of 'to turn
aside to find refuge or sanctuary with someone', an ironic usage in the
context.
32
LXX adds 8ia0r|Kr|<;, but this designation is not otherwise attested

here, and is not employed elsewhere in this narrative.
33
LXXB reads oXov TOV OIKOV ape88apa KOI Ttavia xa amov here as in
12a, and 1 Chron. 13.14b 'b left* *7D HK1 D1K TJU TO DN, both as in
61
MT 2 Sam. 6.12a, for which part-verse Chronicles has no equivalent (cf.

1 Chron. 15.25). However, the slight inconsistency between lib and
12a MT has numerous parallels in Hebrew narrative, and need not be
eliminated.
34
Or y&R with McCarter (1984: 165); I prefer the cohortative as better

expressing David's inner resolve. The statistics of LXX usage show that
emaTpe(|)eiv renders 31$ hiphil over 100 times, far more than any other
Hebrew verb.
35
The text enclosed within curly brackets incorporates additional text,

found in the Lucianic Greek and Old Latin versions, which contributes
significantly to the structure and rhetoric of the narrative unit: compare
in particular 20a below, and see 4.2.2, p. 132. Its absence from MT
might be explained as due to a transcriptional error, a copyist's eye
inadvertently skipping on to 111 "j^l instead of picking up 11"! ~)QK>'1
(so Freedman in McCarter 1984: 165-66). Alternatively, the plus may
reflect a tradition transmitting a fuller version of this narrative than MT
preserves. However, to suppose (with Smith 1899 ad loc.) that the plus
has been deliberately omitted so as not to call glaring attention to
David's allegedly selfish motive requires us to presuppose that ancient
editors and copyists would have perceived David's words in this way, a
dubious presupposition, given that David's action brings a general
blessing to all the people (vv. 18-19).
36
1 Chronicles 15.26 D^n n DTftKn "Kin VTl: part of an obviously

expansionary Chronicles text, assimilative to the preceding plus (15.124). But the Chronicles text both here and in 15.27 seems curiously
drawn into using words close in consonantal form to those to be found
in 2 Sam. 6.13, 14: thus compare ITin 1 Chron. 15.26 with s ^D
2 Sam. 6.13; and fin ^03 ^n~lDQ 1 Chron. 15.27 with W ^D3 -D"OQ
2 Sam. 6.14.
37
MT is perfectly intelligible here, but LXX KOU, rjaav jiei' avxcov

aipovieq TTJV Kifkotov eTrca xopoi, KOI 6\)|j,a (ioox Kai ocpva, 'and
there were with them carrying the ark seven dancing-troups/choirs of
singers, and a sacrifice, a bull and rams (?)', is not only partly unintelligible, but also in parts impossible to link up with MT. It serves perhaps
as a timely reminder of the uncertainties attending attempts to recon-
62
struct the Hebrew text underlying the LXX, and a caution against overvaluing the LXX as a witness.
38
LXX KCCI Aa\)ei8 aveKpo-ueto ev opyavoiq ripjioajaevoK;? "Till

H^D ^DH ~O~OQ; compare 5a0 and n. 22 above. "D~DQ, which occurs
in biblical Hebrew only here and in v. 16 below, is of uncertain
derivation and meaning. BDB: 502b-503a assign it to a root ~I~D with
the meaning, on the basis of assumed Arabic and Ethiopic cognates and
no doubt in view of the context in 2 Samuel 6, 'whirl around in dancing', a view that has been accepted by most. Two scholars (Avishur
1976: 259-60; Ahlstrom 1978: 100-101) have more recently drawn
attention to a probable Ugaritic cognate in wykrkr usb'th, an action
involving El's fingers, part of his response to the receipt of good news
which in the context (CTA 4 IV 28-30) also provokes El to laugh (yprq
Isb wyshq), and to perform some action (?stamp ?drum) with his feet on
his footstool (p'n Ihdm ytpd). Avishur, in taking account also of pntOQ
for ~D~OQ in 1 Chron. 15.29 and of a Midrashic explanation for ~D~DQ,
concluded that 'snapping the fingers' or 'clapping the hands' is the
meaning of ~D~DQ in 2 Samuel 6. Ahlstrom, in reviewing the Ugaritic
evidence, considered that ykrkr and ~D"DQ denote vigorous movements
of the fingers or hands, corresponding to the action of the feet denoted
by ytpd, and that both are elements in the gyrations of a dancer. This
latter view, however, is very hard to reconcile with the reference in
CTA 4 IV 29 to a footstool, hardly an ideal locale for a vigorous dance
for joy! McCarter (1984: 171), rejecting all the preceding explanations,
combines the evidence of CTA 4 IV 30, that ykrkr is 'specifically an
activity of the fingers', with LXX's rendering of ~D~DQ by aveicpo'ue'co
here and avaKpoDojievot; in 6.16, and arrives at the reading ~O~DQ
Ti? ^DD (cf. LXX) and the meaning 'strumming on a sonorous instrument'. It is not clear from McCarter's note whether he therefore
assumes that CTA 4 IV 30 has El playing an instrument, but there is no
reference to an instrument of any kind in the context. Yet I am inclined,
in view of the interpretation of 2 Sam. 6.16 in 6.21, and in 1 Chron.
15.29, to follow McCarter's explanation of ~D~DQ, though not his
emended reading nor its rendering. For 2 Sam. 6.21, in alluding to 6.16,
clearly makes IpIN (cf. LXX) correspond to TTSQ, and Tpncn to "D~)DQ.
Now in 2 Sam. 6.5 mm "OS1? D'pfftoQ expressly involves the playing of
instruments in the liturgical procession, and it is logical to understand
miT "OD1? TIprTOl in 6.21b in the same way, and thus by implication
63
similarly ~D~OQ in 6.16. Accordingly, 1 Chron. 15.29, which has IpID

pn&Ql for ~D~DQ1 TTDQ of 2 Sam. 6.16ba, has arguably drawn these
equivalences from 2 Sam. 6.21, a verse which does not itself appear in
Chronicles. Hence I tentatively conclude that W ^DD ~D"DQ means
'strumming with all his might' or the like.
39
LXX Km eyeveio, 4QSama and 1 Chron. 15.29 TP1, and thus many
would read here. However, there are a sufficient number of examples in
the Hebrew Bible of iTiTI which cannot be taken either as normal waw
consecutives or as frequentatives, as to defy routine emendation to TP1.
De Boer (1974) was right to look for a discourse explanation for this
locution, but wrong to seek to align it with other examples of non-consecutive \veqatal forms, since the discourse function of the verb HTI
when coordinated with other verbs is a special case. Neither Niccacci
(1986 ET 1990: 182-86) nor Waltke and O'Connor (1990: 540-42) in
their respective sections on weqatal forms discuss this special usage of
i~pm. To my observation, mm occurs several times in two particular
discourse situations: (1) resuming narrative of events following predictive discourse, where it indicates that what was foretold has eventuated,
as in 1 Sam. 10.9 in the context of 10.2-10: 'When you leave me today,
you will happen across two men.. .And so it happened (iTm)! As Saul
turned away from Samuel and was leaving, God transformed his heart,
and all these signs came to pass that day...' Compare 1 Sam. 17.48 in
the context of 17.45-52; Jer. 38.28 in the context of 38.21-40.8; (2)
narrative which relates coincidental events which are partly or fully
concomitant with what has just been related, as in 1 Sam. 1.12 in the
context of 1.9-13: 'Hannah rose...and she prayed...and made a vow
and said... So this was the situation (!Tm): while Hannah was praying
at length, Eli was observing her mouth, but Hannah spoke only to herself. ..so Eli thought she was drunk.' Compare 1 Sam. 25.20 in the
context of 25.18-22.
Thus 2 Sam. 6.16 in the context of 6.12-17 is an instance of this second usage: 6.12 reports summarily the bringing up of the ark to the city
of David, 6.13-15 adds to this significant details directly related to the
transfer, and then 6.16 highlights a coincidental event: 'Now it turned
out (iTm) that as the ark was entering the city of David Michal the
daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw David...' While
TP1 as the default usage is perfectly possible in this context (cf., e.g.,
64
1 Sam. 7.10 in the context of 7.8-10, syntactically a very close parallel),

rvm as the more arresting is rhetorically the more effective usage.
40
LXX eco<; TcoXeox; 1 Chron. 15.29 Tl? 73): the absence of II? in MT
here might be accounted for as 7 read as "I, and thence haplography
with ~lO)#. However, apparently neither Targum nor Syriac read it, and
the syntax does not require it: compare TUH 1N2 Jer. 32.24, and 1 Sam.
4.12; 2 Kgs 8.7 (both with place names).
41
1 Chron. 15.29 pntOQI lp"ID: this is probably to be explained as a

replacing of the rare terms in 2 Sam. 6.16 with the parallel, and more
common, terms employed in the same order in 6.21. That being the
case, it is a pointer to the inclusion of 6.21 in the Vorlage of Chronicles, despite its absence from the text of Chronicles. It may also further
suggest the possibility that that Vorlage did not include most of 6.21
MT/LXX, that is, from mrr -p-Q to 'wifcr *?!?.
42
The separation of D^QÊ? from mÛ and its placing at the end of the
clause here is intentional, to give prominence to each of the types of
sacrifice, but in particular to the $elamim because of their role in what
follows. But when what is new information in 17b becomes part of the
given in 18a it is no longer given prominence by taking a conventional
placing. Syriac and 1 Chron. 16.1 reflect a conventional placing here
also, but LXX and Targ. Jon. support MT. For this rhetorical placing of
D'Q^tf here compare flTIT in-jITiT1?! n3TI 7p Gen. 13.15; 28.13.
43
m3^ mrr is absent from 1 Chron. 16.2b, as in 1 Chron. 13.6b; compare 2 Sam. 6.2b and n. 16 above. McCarter's (1984: 167) rather tortuous hypothetical argument for omitting it, confessedly flying in the face
of all extant witnesses for 2 Sam. 6.18, also ignores on the one hand
Chronicles' manifest indifference to the title (see n. 16 above), and on
the other the vital ideological function the title has in 2 Sam. 6-7: compare 7.8, 26, 27, and see 5.2.1.3, pp. 176-77 5.2.2.3, pp. 208-209
below.
44
After p^m, 1 Chron. 16.3aa is much shorter, reading simply CTN îh
?K~lcr. Targum and Syriac correspond to 2 Sam. 6.19, as does LXX,
except that it adds yet another phrase, GOTO Aav eco<; Bripaapee, before
CCTCO av8po<; eax; yuvaiicoq. JO0 "KG "FJ?1 ]1Q*? could have been lost by
i
65
homoioarkton with the following phrase, or it might have inadvertently

come in as an expected phrase in the context, under the influence of
rraK tin tf'Kn1?.

45
~ID$K, which occurs only here and in the parallel 1 Chron. 16.3, is of
unknown meaning. The Greek versions take it as some kind of bread,
Targum and Syriac as a portion of meat, a view also taken by the rabbis
according to McCarter (1984: 173). Given that meat, as part of the
$elamim sacrifice, was normally consumed by the worshippers, this is a
reasonable guess.
46
LXX Km ei)XoyT|aev amov. Although this phrase is absent from all

other witnesses, it is strongly attested to by the Greek tradition, only
LXXN omitting. I accept the reading because (1) it is difficult to see how
it could have been casually introduced, whereas its omission may be
due to homoioarkton; (2) it intensifies the irony: compare 1 Sam. 13.10;
25.27, 32, and see below 4.2.3, p. 140.
47
Despite the stricture of Gesenius-Kautzsch (GKC 75y) and the hesitancy of S.R. Driver (1913: 272), the construction appears grammatically quite parallel to the use of the absolute infinitive with a finite verb
form, and it is represented in LXX, Targ. Jon. and Syriac. Moreover, the
rhetorical heightening involved makes a suitable climax to the ringing
contempt of Michal's 'greeting' to David.
48
MT D'pin, 'the idlers, loafers', so Targum, Syriac, Vulgate. This

seems a perfectly possible use of the adjective, despite the objections of
Orlinsky (1946: 29-30). Perhaps a stronger objection to the reading is
to be found in the implicature that Michal assumes that idlers as a class
were well known for suggestive exposure of themselves to low-born
women. LXX reads TCOV opxo\)|aevcov =D<Hp"in, 'the dancers'. Not only
does this more obviously relate to the actions of David which Michal is
holding in aristocratic contempt, but also that dancers expose themselves, intentionally or not, in the course of their movements is pragmatically an easier implicature to derive than the above. Finally, the
way David's reply in 6.21 throws back at Michal her own words (see
4.2.3, p. 142 and cf. next note) tends to confirm the reading D'lpin
here.
66
49
The reading accepts LXX (except LXXA) op%rjao|iai, probably to be

read "Tp~lK here in accord with the piel "Tp"lQ in 1 Chron. 15.29, which,
as I argued in n. 38 above, is based on this verse. Moreover, this reading, along with D'Hp'in (LXX op%o-u|LiEvcov) in the previous verse, tends
to be confirmed by the rhetorical observation that David's reply throws
back at Michal the very terms of her scorn: thus note n~IQK "HtfN 22ba,
and compare TTftpJl 22aa with TJ^ 20bp; TIO 22a(3 with -QD3 20bp;
mnnKn 22ba with mnDK 20bp; ITQDK 22bp with 13D3 20bp. See further 4.2.3, p. 144.
50
The text in curly brackets is restored on the basis of opXTjaoum

e\)ôyr|TO(; K/upio<; in all main Greek witnesses except Alexandrinus.
Its loss is easily accounted for by haplography, and its restoration adds
considerably to the rhetoric of the text: on this see 4.2.3, p. 142.
51
Reading the *? with many Hebrew MSS, and in accord with the other
occurrences of this locution in 1 Sam. 13.14ba; 25.30b and 5.2bp.
But note the absence of *7 with T23 in the different locution in 7.8ba
below.
52
LXX (LXXA omits first two words) KCCI arcoKaA/u<|)0r|aouai en owox;,

that is, HKO "H# TTl^Jl, 'and I shall go on displaying myself like this'.
TH^] is certainly possible, as David picking up on Michal's . ..rf?33
m^] m^rD 20bpy: compare the other instances of this given in n. 49
above. But MT, which is supported by Targum and Syriac, makes a
rhetorically forceful contrastive inclusio between TTl^p]! and rniDK at
the two margins of the utterance 6.22: see 4.2.3, p. 144. It is thus more
probable that Tn^l is a misreading of Tll'pp]! here under the influence
of 6.20.
53
In MT David is being as bitterly ironic in his reply to Michal here as

she was to him in her salutation, and the reading TIO is crucial to the
irony. ~[Tin (cf. LXX and OL) turns David's words into a lame echo of
Michal's, and T3'in (MS MT, adopted by McCarter 1984: 186) into a
banal pietism. As both Wellhausen (1871: 170) and the editors of CTAT
(p. 244) appreciated, ev o<j)0aX|Lioi<; <TOI> needs to be seen as an integral
part of the very different reading of 6.22 in LXX.
67
54
tf] ntO, 'look here now': 1 Chron. 17.Ib reads the less robust run. On
the rhetorical force of R] HfcO see 5.2.1.1, pp. 64-65.
55
-]^H *?, 'to the king': 1 Chron. 17.2 reads TTftK, 'to David', thus
weakening the rhetorical effect of the insistence on "[Ôil here: see
5.2.1.1, p. 164.
56
"[^, 'go' is missing in a number of MSS of MT and the Peshitta, as well

as 1 Chron. 17.2, due to homoioteleuton with the preceding "Jin1?^.
57
Tn 'PK "HH^ 'TK, 'to my servant, to David': the repetition of a grammatical operator, namely a preposition or prepositional construct, or the
definite object marker fltf, in a class noun + proper name appositional
string (x-CN x-PN) occurs quite a number of times in the Hebrew
Bible, mostly in narrative texts, and most frequently in Samuel. There
is an unusually high concentration of five such strings in vv. 5-10 of
our text: mi ^ HUD *? 5aa; 'Wlfcr HN SQ^ n 7a(3; TTb H3U1? 8aa;
^tOGr ^y 'DI? *?!? 8bp; ^tiTVD^ 'fish lOaa. Most commentators ignore
the phenomenon, but others delete in all cases the second occurrence of
the operator (x), citing the LXX reading where this appears to support
deletion. However, of the five examples cited above, LXXB actually
supports MT in 7.8bfJ and 7.10aa. Moreover, an examination of the LXX
readings over a wide range of examples in the Hebrew Bible, especially
in Samuel, suggests that inconsistency in treatment of the phenomenon
by the translators is to be reckoned with. But in any case, the examples
cannot be considered discretely from one another, as isolated text-critical questions. The string is a syntactico-rhetorical device for marking
the CN, which is always the first of the two nouns, separately from the
PN, to highlight the CN thereby as a notable attribute of the PN. It is
not accidental that the five examples in 7.5-10 involve either David or
Israel, two entities whose relationship to Yahweh as defined by the CN
is central to Yahweh's discourse here. See on 7.5-10 5.2.1.2, 5.2.1.3,
below, and on the device in general the author's 'An Unremarked
Rhetorical Marker in Biblical Hebrew Prose' (forthcoming in Hebrew
Studies 1999).
58
D^Qft, 'from Egypt': McCarter (1984: 192 ad loc.) proposes to omit

with 1 Chron. 17.5, claiming support from an alleged 'variety of positions in which it stands' in the Greek MSS. But (1) the details given by
McCarter themselves indicate that 'variety of positions' is an over-
68
statement, since only LXXB differs from MT in placing e AiyimToi)

before TOIX; wotx; Iapar|A,; (2) of 37 examples in the Hebrew Bible of
expressions using the hiphil of n1?!? in reference to the Exodus from
Egypt, only one (Exod. 33.12) omits DH2iQQ or its equivalent, and that
in a context hardly parallel to the present text; (3) support for MT is
found in 1 Kgs 8.16aa, which gives a close rendering of the present
text. I conclude therefore that Q'HliQQ should undoubtedly be retained.
59
ptfo:n ^n^n l^nna rpnff), 'but I have been moving about in a tentdwelling': p$Qm ^nKH is a hendiadys, as is shown by the parallel pair
^HK, pm in Ps. 78.60; compare Num. 3.25. On the hendiadys in Hebrew see Waltke and O'Connor (1990: 74 4.6.1.a[6]). 1 Chron. 17.5b
MT reads p&QQl ^HN *? *7.1D iTriKl where "f^nDD has inadvertently
been omitted before the similar ^HNQ. Chronicles has expanded the
hendiadys in accord with the idiom with "f^nnn found in 1 Chron.
16.20//Ps. 105.13.
60
'n-m "linn 'was there (ever) a word I spoke?': LXX ei XaXcov

eXaA,r|aa witnesses to a reading TT"m "Gin, 'did I ever speak?', which
is supported by LXX 1 Chron. 17.6, whereas MT there supports MT
here. Either is a possible reading of the consonantal text, but in view of
mm "1CJN "Qin in 7.25, and given the ideological significance of
Yahweh's prophetic 'word' in this chapter the reading of MT here is
preferable: see further 5.2.1.2, p. 173, 5.2.1.5, p. 199, and 5.2.2.3,
pp. 207-208.
61t
7K-)CT 'COti [LOQ?] THIN HK, 'one of/anyone [?from al]] the tribes of
Israel': I have argued elsewhere against the frequently adopted reading
'BSC*, 'judges of for 'Cnc?, 'tribes of, and against the reading of'CQtf
as 'IOC, 'leaders of, and for the proposed reading with ^3Q, '(anyone)
from all': see Murray (1987a), and below 5.2.1.2, pp. 173-74.
62
pttn vni^l..snQ&l..snto, 'so as to make... to establish... to plant...

so that he may dwell': the construction of this series of four weqdtal
verbs has long been an exegetical puzzle. 1 Chron. 17.8b-9 has the
same series of four weqdtal verbs as here. Of the major versions, LXX,
Targ. Jon. and OL all translate TlfolM by a past tense, and the rest by
future tenses. Only the Peshitta is fully consistent in translating all four
by futures. The problem of construction arises from the discourse
69
context in 7.8-11: on this see my detailed discussion below, 5.2.1.3,

pp. 180-82.
63
DED 'ma DC?, 'a name as great as...': the accentuation of MT (zaqeph
qdton on ^lia) construes the adjective as attributive: 'a great name'.
Many, however, follow MT 1 Chron. 17.8 and LXX here to delete 'ma. I
suggest, on the other hand, the zaqeph qdton be moved back to D2J, 'ma
be retained and the string D 'ma construed as equivalent to the English
'as + adjective + as' comparative string: for two other instances of this
similarly comparative 'adjective + D' string in biblical Hebrew, see
Deut. 4.7 UTftK miTD V^K D^Tlp, 'as near to it as Yahweh our God';
4.8 HKTn rmnn 'pro DpHS, 'as righteous as all this Torah'.
64
Dlpn 'nnfcn, 'to establish a place (of safety)': see Murray (1990: 31419) for the Hebrew idiom involved, and (1990: 299-313) for a detailed
rebuttal of the contention that DlpQ means 'sacred place, temple' here.
65
DVH ]Q*7\ 'namely from the day': an equivalent to the conjunction is

missing in LXXB, Peshitta and OL, but its presence in MT is attested by
other versions. The clause is explicative of i~[JliK~O, 'in former days'
(lObp), as the ]Q^ clause without 1 explicativum in Deut. 4.32 (so
Schulz 1920: 79 ad loc., who wishes accordingly to delete 1 here). If the
1 is wrongly treated as conjunctivum, the two expressions refer to different epochs, with nil2JR~Q having to refer to the period of Egyptian
captivity, a reference perhaps facilitated by iniDU'P immediately preceding: nitf piel is used of the Egyptian oppression in Gen. 15.13; Exod.
1.11-12. But this construction of 7.1 Ob(3-11 ace ruins its rhetoric: see
5.2.1.3, pp. 183-84.
66
~prTN ^DQ "j^ TlPPm, 'thus have I given you rest from your enemies':
logical coherence with (1) JEffi -p:TN ^D HR nrTDKI, 'I cut off all
your enemies before you' 9aa, and (2) vrTK 'PDQ THOQ "ft mn mm
Ib, 'for YHWH had given him respite around from all his enemies',
requires a statement of completed action here, thus this weqdtal form is
a preterite, as it is indicated to be read by the Masoretic accentuation.
The proposal of Ewald, completely without textual warrant, but
recently espoused by McCarter (1984: 193 ad loc.), to read here third
person suffixes (1*7 and VT8) with reference to Israel is misconceived.
Nor is McCarter's ingenious proposal to explain Ib as a misplaced
70
correction of llap (1984: 191) persuasive, since llap is clearly

intended to summarize the thrust of v. 9 in the terminology of Ib. It
may further be noted that MT is supported here by 4Q Florilegium 1.7
rD'TN ÎDQ .ID1? T)[imn]l (cf. Brooke 1985: 87).
67
~nm, 'hereby announces': a performativeperfectum declarativum (cf.

Mettinger 1976: 59 n. 29). A parallel construction to lib, using a
vfqatalform ofTTI, is found in 1 Sam. 3.13a: n '3 QSCIJ O 1^ -mam
DÎI? 7V irrn, 'I hereby announce to him that I am about to judge his
house for ever'; and for similar use of qatal forms of T3I1 as declaratives compare Mic. 6.8; Deut. 26.3b; 30.18a. Emendation of MT to
"^"pn] (so Klostermann 1887: 155 and Dhorme 1910: 328), or to
"^^NO (so Nowack 1902: 177) on the basis off*? 12N1 MT and avîaco
ae LXX B 1 Chron. 17.10b is thus obviated. Indeed, the readings in
Chronicles here can be explained as corruptions of 2 Sam. 7.lib MT:
"f^ i;m was first read Tj'?'run>l and then corrected to 7jlp'7l^l to conform
to the preceding first person verbs, whence a\)^r|aco ae, and finally
altered to 7^ 1281 as in 1 Chron. 17.10b MT, under the influence of
2 Sam. 7.lib.
68
iT)iT... HIT, 'Yahweh.-.Yahweh': in this utterance the use of third

person reference to Yahweh within a context where otherwise such reference uses the first person, as also the repetition of the divine name in
such short order, emphasize the solemnity and auctoritas with which
the declaration is made. Some other instances of third person reference
to himself by Yahweh where first person would normally be expected
are Exod. 19.11; 2 Sam. 12.9 (also an oracle of Nathan); Jer. 14.10
(there immediately following on from the messenger formula). The
phenomenon is also observable in Ugaritic texts: see the examples cited
by G.R. Driver (1956: 22, 132). Other examples of the repetition of
the divine name in short order are 1 Sam. 13.14b, Amos 7.15; compare
also the close repetition of "f^QH in 2 Sam. 19.24. Thus neither the
widely adopted deletion of the second miT, nor alternatively its emendation to ITm on the basis of the LXX reading here (see n. 70 below) is
necessary: both fail to appreciate the rhetoric involved.
69
rrfry, 'will make': many wish to emend the reading to HDT, 'will
build', as the reading of 1 Chron. 17.10 MT compare LXX, and of 4Q
Florilegium 1.10 (Brooke 1985: 87), and supported by the LXX
readings oiKo8our|aet/<; here, and by the use of the locution JT3 iTQ,
71
'build a house', elsewhere in our text in 7.5b, 27a(3 (so recently

McCarter 1984: 194 ad loc.\ Despite the apparent weight of evidence
in favour of reading n]T here, the proposed emendation fails to deal
with one crucial question: why would anyone have 'altered' such an
expected reading to the much less obvious n&IT? Therefore, given the
relative frequency of thefigura etymologica in Hebrew, as well as the
two occurrences of rP3 rm elsewhere in our text, it is far more likely
that a reading ITO 1^ n&JT, the lectio dijficilior, has been inadvertently
assimilated to the expected ~[^ HIT ITO. Moreover, we have strong
indirect attestation for the reading H&IT in the conflationary paraphrase
of 7.lib, 16a in 1 Sam. 25.28ba |Q] ITU TIN1? mm n&HT rto O, 'for
Yahweh will certainly make for my lord a sure house'; and in the
citation of 7.lib in 1 Kgs 2.24a(3"Ql ItftO TO ^ rto "itfRI, 'and
who has made me a house as he promised'. Further, the locution
TO n&JJ, 'to make a house', is used in a literal sense in 1 Kgs 7.8b, and
1 Chron. 15. la (DTQ), and in the same figurative sense as in our present
text in Exod. 1.21b. In view of this evidence, I retain the reading of MT
and understand it as an intended departure from the conventional
expression to give a particular nuance to the utterance: see below
5.2.1.4, pp. 187-88.
70
{rrm} mrr, 'Yahweh {So it will be that}' LXX Km EOTOH OL et erit

as the opening words of 7.12, neither with any equivalent to mm at the
end of 1 Ib, are usually taken as witness to an original reading rP!T), corrupted in MT to mrr, and then taken with lib (so McCarter 1984: 194
ad loc.}. However, 1 Chron. 17.10b(3.11aa MT and LXX read both mm
and rrm, though neither has the miT at the beginning of 2 Sam. 7.1 Ib,
since both read a first person verb there. I readily concede that in some
circumstances mm might easily be misread as mm by a copyist. But it
is not so easy to see how an idiomatic mm as part of the common syntactic construction "O mm + yiqtol at the beginning of 7.12 should be
read as an egregiously otiose mm with the preceding clause. If anything, the corruption is more likely to have been the opposite, with an
otiose mm transformed into an expected mm. But another distinct possibility is that the original reading was both, mm at the end of 1 Ib, mm
at the beginning of 12 (cf. Chronicles), with the mm then lost by haplography. Textually the decision is finely balanced, but rhetorical considerations favour this latter option: see 5.2.1.4, pp. 190-91.
72
71
1^QQ RiT 127R, 'who shall come forth from your loins': LXX 2 Sam.
7.12ay and 1 Chron. 17.Hay 6 eaten EK tt|<; KoiXiaq aou 1 Chron.
17.Hay MT~p3D rPiT "12JR, 'who shall be from among your sons/
descendants', I take to be a tendentious reading of a locution (iTiT ~)$R
"pCQQ) equivalent to the expression in 2 Sam. 7.12ay (cf. Ps. 132.11),
but which facilitates singular reference to Solomon. See further my
Claim for Power (forthcoming).
72
inDl7QD, 'their kingship', and so on: on the reference of the noun

"JIHT, 'your seed/offspring', 12a and its third singular pronominal
anaphors in vv. 12b-15, see the detailed discussion in 5.2.1.4, pp. 18890, 195-97.
73<)
QCJl? fPD rm% 'will build a house for my name': LXX oiKo8ouT|aei
fioi OIKOV TCO ovoumi (4,01), 'will build for me a house for my name';
1 Chron. 17.12a MTP'3 ^ n3T LXX oiico8o|Lir|(7ei uoi OIKOV, 'will
build me a house'. Chronicles here has assimilated to the form of
expression ^ HDP as in 2 Sam. 7.5b = 1 Chron. 17.4b, and eliminated
the now otiose 'Dtf1?, whereas LXX 2 Sam. 7.13a has conflated both
readings. That MT 2 Sam. 7.13a is the superior reading (contra Mettinger 1976: 53) is confirmed (1) by the rhetorical and theological relationship of the utterance in 13a to that of 5b (on which see 5.2.1.4, pp.
191-92 with Figure 17); and (2) the evidence of the other occurrences
of the locution iT)iT Dtf1? ITD rtn, 'to build a house for Yahweh's name'
and its anaphoric transforms (1 Kgs 5.l7[3],l9[5]bis; 8.17, 18, 19, 20,
44, 48 = 2 Chron. 6.7, 8, 9, 10, 34, 38; 1 Chron. 22.7, 8, 10, 19; 28.3;
29.16; 2 Chron. 1.18[2.1]; 2.3[4]), none of which has the redundant
dative, except 1 Chron. 29.16.
74
inDlPQD ROD, 'his royal throne': LXXBtov 9povov cewov, 1 Chron.

17.12b MT 1ROD LXX tov epovov awou, all 'his throne'. This looks
impressive enough evidence for the shorter reading (so McCarter 1984:
194 ad loc.). The reading of 2 Sam. 7.13b MT, however, receives indirect support from 1 Kgs 9.5 n^sb ^fcr bv fro^na ROD PR 'nnpm
and 1 Chron. 22.10b ChlV 1U ^R~l^s bS3 IPID^Q ROD 'PirDm, 'I will
establish your/his royal throne over Israel for ever', with which compare the closely related 1 Chron. 28.5bp ^Rl^r bo mrr PID^Q ROD ^
'on Yahweh's royal throne over Israel'. Further, the same expression
IPD^QQ ROD also occurs in Deut. 17.18ap, and the closely similar
73
rTD^QD NOD is found in Hag. 2.22aa. Finally, compare Isa. 9.6a[7a]

inD^Qft ^W Til NOD *?,!?, 'upon David's throne and over his kingdom'
for a poetic break-up of the locution, and also the paralleling of NOD
111 with nD^Qnn in 1 Kgs 2.45b, 46b MT. Accordingly, I see no need
to emend MT here.
75
D~IN...'im#rQ "ICON, 'such that...humankind': there is no reason to

emend MT here to im^mi, as does McCarter (1984: 194 ad loc.) with
only the Peshitta as precedent. MT is perfectly grammatical, the construction with "ICON links 7.14, 15 together as one sentence: compare my
translation. The whole of 7.14b is missing in 1 Chronicles 17, as inconsonant with Chronicles' portrayal of Solomon.
76
~no>> N1?, 'will not depart': it is very tempting to read TON, 'I will not
remove', the reading of 2 Chron. 17.13b MT and LXX as well as LXX
here (so Wellhausen 1871: 112 ad loc., and most), not only for textual
reasons, but also because it fits better into the overall structure of
7.14,15 by continuing with Yahweh as subject. Compare also ~p"Q
'HNQ ITOni ^DH TOH N1? ICON D'iTPN, 'Blessed be God who did not
turn aside my prayer, or his loyal love from me' Ps. 66.20. Despite this,
one has to ask, why would such an obvious and smooth reading give
way to a less expected one? I find the arguments finely balanced, and
thus leave MT intact, as the more difficult reading.
77
MT T]D^Q THOn "ICON 'PINCO DtfQ smon ncdND, 'in the way that I took
it from Saul, whom I removed before you': there is considerable variation of reading in the witnesses, and any attempt to reconstruct an 'original' reading can only be tentative. It may be helpful to tabulate the
readings of the main witnesses, in their probable Hebrew retro versions
where applicable (see Figure 1, p. 74). (Note: in order to fit into the
columns and to preserve alignment as much as possible, I have written
THOn defectively throughout.) The tabulation makes it clear that there
are three questions of reading to be decided: (1) "ICON 'PINCO DDQ or
simply nCONQ; (2) THOn or ITTI; (3) TBÔ) or ''EXD). The best way in
is to tackle (2) first: it is not easy to explain how the reading iTTI might
have arisen secondarily, unless as a deliberate change by the Chronicler. But there does not appear to be any obvious reason for such a
change. On the other hand, the second THOn in 2 Sam. 7.15 can be
accounted for as an inadvertent dittograph of the first Tnon, since each
2 Sam. 7.15b
MT
LXX
Pesh.
1 Chron. 17.13b MT
LXX
Targ.
Figure 1: Retroverted Textual Readings for 2 Sam. 7.15b //1 Chron. 17.13b
2 Sam. 7
18ba
LX
hitt
Targ. Jon.
mry' lh'
1 Chron. 17
16ba
19aa
mry' 'lh'
17aa
19b
mry' lh'
17b
20b
mry' lh'
19aa
22a
mry' lh'
25aa
mry' lh'
20aa
23aa
28aa
mry' lh'
29ba
mry' lh'
Figure 2: Textual Readings relative to
MT
LXX
some witnesses:
26aa
27ba
in 2 Sam. 7.18-29
75
follows a form of "lti. But the plural m in 1 Chron. 17.13b LXX (vn
l&KQ = GOTO TCOV OVTCOV), and the plural ou|)' cov for "iffiiNQ in 2 Sam. 7.15b
LXX, are both clearly dependent on the ambiguity of "I&NQ without the
antecedent ÎKC? (see below). I thus opt for ITi! as the more probable
'original' reading. This decision virtually carries with it the decision to
read ~|'']Dl? in (3) above. "J^S^Q and ^S^Q are both secondary to the
reading THOn in this part of the verse, with ^D^Q arising from omission
of the ~[, probably by a haplographic confusion with the 1 at the
beginning of the next verse. Finally, we come to the somewhat more
vexed issue involved in (1) above. Despite the opinion of Wellhausen
(1871: 172 ad loc.) that the name Saul is more likely to have been
inserted than omitted, I think it is possible to account for the omission
as a form of haplography with the following "12JK. The resultant unique
combination ~l>N DUQ would have readily been corrected to the relatively common "ICJKQ. No doubt to moderns the reading Wellhausen
defends ("pD1? HTI "KZJKQ) shows 'a nice sensibility' ('feinem Gefiihl',
1871: 172), but such coyness is not in character with Yahweh's discourse here, nor with the brutal directness of David's words in 6.21,
which are picked up on here. Thus, on balance, I opt for the reading
"152JN ÎKtfJ DDQ. Putting all these decisions together results in a reading
of-pEft rrn -KDK 'nRti DUQ 'rnon "itito for 2 Sam. 7.l5b.
78
MT...-[NOD "p:ia'7..irDl7am -[STO, 'your royal house... before you;

your throne...': LXX reads o OIKO<; amoi) KCCI TI (3acn,A:ia a\)TO\)...
evcoTUov euov, KCCI o 0povo<; amoi)..., 'his royal house.. .before me;
his throne'. So OL. Targ. Jon. supports the pronominal suffixes of MT,
as does the Peshitta, except in reading qdmy, 'before me' for "j'QS'?.
The suffixes of 1 Chron. 17.14 MT...W')...TrDl7D:jl TPm YPrnOJ?m,
'I will set him up in my house and my kingdom...and his throne...'
are deviated from by LXXTCICTTCGCCGamov ev OIKCO p,o\) KCXI EV
paoiA,eia amoi)... KQI Gpovoq a\)TO\)..., 'I will confirm him in my
house and in his kingdom... and his throne...', but this may be a
simple misreading of! for \ Thus there is some support for the reading
1NOD in 2 Sam. 7.16b, and for '3S1? in 16a, but considerable variation is
attested in the person of the other pronominal suffixes in 16. Here we
may discount the Chronicles reading of first person suffixes as a tendentious alteration, consistent with Chronicles' standing representation
of the Davidic kingdom as Yahweh's kingdom (cf. 1 Chron. 28.5;
29.23; 2 Chron. 13.8, but note, on the other hand, IJTO'pa NOD TOOm
76
D^ltf ID ^Klftr Û, 'I will establish his royal throne over Israel as
enduring' 1 Chron. 22.1 Ob, a conflation of 2 Sam. 7.13b, 16a). This
reduces the choice to one between second and third person suffixes.
Rehm (1937: 19 d.2) considers the third person pronouns in LXX
2 Sam. 7.16 to arise from deliberate assimilation to the prevailing context in the interests of smoothness. The reading is not obviously resolvable on a purely textual basis, but a rhetorical consideration tips the
balance in favour of second person suffixes in 16 apart from ''lEb. Verse
16 is a summary statement concluding Yahweh's comment on the topic
m introduced in lib (see in detail 5.2.1.4, pp. 194-96). In lib
Yahweh promises the dynasty to David (fTO ~p nc?IT), and below in his
prayer David constantly refers to it as his dynasty (TP2, 18b; "|"QD ITQ,
19ap, 26ba, 29aa, 29bp; urn, 25ap; -p n33R rvn, 27ap). Thus v. 16,
forming an inclusio with lib, appropriately reads second person suffixes in reference to David, apart from '3S1? where the suffix refers to
Yahweh: '131 fKOD '3D1? DÎ? 1S3 -jnD^QQI "[ITU ]D31.
79
miT TfK, 'my lord Yahweh': in 2 Samuel 7 MT this vocative occurs

seven or eight times throughout David's prayer (18ba, 19aa, 19b, 20b,
22a [25aa], 28aa, 29ba). In 7.25aa the Hebrew manuscript tradition is
divided between DTI^N mrP read by the majority, and HIIT S]"TK read by
a number of manuscripts. The evidence of the other major textual witnesses is varied, as Figure 2, p. 74, shows.
Several observations may be made:
(1) LXX reading Kvpie Kvpie uov in 7.22a must be the result of an
inner Greek corruption, since a Hebrew reading "OIK mrP would
be completely without parallel. Either the jioi) alone, or the
combination KDpie uo\) was accidently omitted, and then carelessly inserted in the wrong place.
(2) 1 Chronicles 17 in no instance reads ni!T TIN. However, there is
no example of this combination anywhere in Chronicles. To be
sure, the only other examples of its occurrence in Chronicles'
Vorlage outside the present text are 1 Kgs 2.26 and 8.53, passages not incorporated into Chronicles. But the Chronicler has
twice elsewhere introduced the combination DTI^N mrP, used
twice here (17.16ba, 17b), against his Vorlage: 2 Chron. 6.41, 42
= Ps. 132.8, 9 where the readings are mrr and nothing
respectively.
77
(3) The readings of Peshitta and Targ. Jon. of 2 Samuel 7 reflect the
same process which has produced the Masoretic qere DTT^N TIN.
But they nonetheless bear witness to a double reading in all
instances.
(4) Neither LXX 2 Samuel 7 nor 1 Chronicles 17 MT and LXX have
double readings in all instances. Moreover, agreement on single
or double reading is observable between the two sets of witnesses in the first four instances, but this fails to carry through
the final four.
Thus the textual evidence alone seems to me to lead to no certain conclusions. Again I would contend that a rhetorical consideration is relevant to the question of the textual reading. In the oracular address in 7.5
and 7.8 David is identified by the term 111 S~QU as 'my subject, David'.
Moreover, throughout his prayer David refers to himself as "|~Qi? (for
the references see the list in n. 81 below). The form of divine address
which precisely corresponds to this is miT TIN, 'my lord Yahweh', the
all-but-uniform reading of 2 Samuel 7 MT. Now it is notable that this
combination appears in the text of Samuel only in this prayer, and
occurs elsewhere in the Deuteronomistic History only in scattered texts
(Deut. 3.24; 9.26; Josh. 7.7; Judg. 6.22; 16.28; 1 Kgs 2.26; 8.53), all
prayers except 1 Kgs 2.26, where it is associated with the ark. Accordingly, I conclude that the combination has a particular rhetorical function in this prayer, and thus read it consistently in all eight instances.
80
DlNn mm n^n, '? and this is the instruction/law of humankind': the

reading of MT is supported by all the major versions, but there are
considerable semantic and pragmatic difficulties in construing the
clause (see 5.2.2.1, p. 203). The 'parallel' in 1 Chron. 17.17b reads
rftUDn D1NH 11HD MPTim, '? and you have looked upon me like the
turn of humanity the step (?)', a text with its own syntactic and semantic difficulties: for a suggested resolution of them see Willi (1972: 154).
Scholarly strategies to deal with the difficulties of 2 Sam. 7.19b fall
into two main groups: (a) those which retain the text of MT and attribute some special meaning to DlNil min; (b) those which adopt an
emended form of 1 Chron. 17.17b: for a comprehensive survey to the
time of writing (1969) see Eissfeldt (1973: 143-46). Since none of the
explanations under (a) carries conviction, and (b) is rendered dubious,
both by the versional support for 2 Sam. 7.19b MT, and by the difficulty
of accounting for the differences of the Samuel from the Chronicles
78
text (whether unemended or emended), I eschew any detailed discussion of these proposals here, and retain the text of MTfaute de mieux.
81
MT Til? [Til], 'more (can) [David]': LXX Aavei6 ETI; 1 Chron.

17.18a Til Til? LXX en Aauei8. Peshitta 2 Sam. 7.20a reads wmn' twb
ywsp lbdk dwyd dn 'mr Ik, 'what more (can) your servant David say to
you?' Purely on the textual evidence for this verse, the Peshitta reading
is easily dismissed as secondary, an assimilation of 7.20a to 7.26ba.
However, the use by David of the PN 111 alone in third person reference to himself in this prayer is unique to this verse, otherwise the form
of third person self-reference is regularly "[131? (19ap, 20b, 21b, 25ap,
27aa, 27ba, 28ba, 29aa, 29by), and once Til -]l3tf (26ba). My
impression is further that PN alone as self-reference is most unusual in
discourse using the self-abasement style. Accordingly, looking at the
textual evidence in the context of the passage's rhetoric suggests that
"[131? has dropped out between Til? and 1311? (or, in a different version
of the text, 133^: see next note) by a form of haplography: for the word
order compare Judg. 9.37, 1 Sam. 23.4; 2 Sam. 2.22. The resultant lack
of a subject was corrected by a marginal 111, subsequently variably
inserted before or after 111?. The Peshitta reading is a conflate of the
original and the corrected reading.
82
"f^ 13T?, 'say to you': the reading of MT is supported by the major

versions. The parallel 1 Chron. 17.18a reads 113^ "p^K Til *]W 1ft
"[13.1? DN, '? what more can David add to you for glory with your servant?'. The LXX reading of TOD Soâaai here witnesses to "Q?*? for MT
li)3Dtp, yielding 'what will David still add to you to glorify (you)'. Only
some Lucianic MSS have the equivalent of "[131? PIN in this part of the
verse, reading Soâaca ae TOV 8ovXov aoi), and thus making Yahweh,
not David, the subject of the infinitive. Accordingly, McCarter (1984:
233-34 ad loc., cf. his translation 232 ad loc.) reads in 2 Sam. 7.20a
"[131?n135"!T^TnT01'nQ''WhatcanDaviddoforyouthat
you should honor your servant?' However, (1) the infinitive 155^ cannot felicitously be construed with a subject (Yahweh) different from
that of the main verb rpOV (David) without its being specifically signalled in the syntax; (2) in any case, 7.20a MT makes excellent sense
and fits perfectly well into the context of David's prayer; (3) the reading
IBp'p can be accounted for as a misreading of 131'? (confusion of D and
1 is possible in some scripts); 135*7 an<^ T^ tîen swrtcn places to
79
make a smoother reading (the stage represented by LXX 1 Chron.

17.18a), and subsequently 15^^ attracts ~|~DI? (DK) to it as object,
either from 7.20a (on this see n. 81 above on TlJJ TT1), or from 7.20b, to
yield a reading more in keeping with the immediate context of 7.19.
This is the reading lying behind 1 Chron. 17.18a MT, which has suffered further corruption to "f'op'p.
83
MT I-QJ> PN PJTP nn^l, 'you know your servant': 1 Chron. 17.18b

MT niTP "|"TIUJ PK nptfl. The variant word order of each is also reflected in their respective LXX versions, except that Lucianic MSS in
2 Sam. 7.20b follow the order of Chronicles. Given that (1) this latter
order is the less expected, and thus is the more likely inadvertently to
be changed to the other, and (2) as the less usual it has the greater
rhetorical force, I accept it as the better reading.
84
"p:n Tain, 'on account of your word': so LXX A ; LXX B 5icc TOV
8o\)A,ov oot), 1 Chron. 17.19a "]"QD "TOID, both 'on account of your
servant'; LXXL 2 Sam. 7.21a 8ia TOV Xoyov aoi) KCCI 8ia TOV SouXov
aoi) conflates both readings. It is possible that ~|~Q,tf came about from a
dittograph of "TQJO, misread as a half-expected ~j~QU, a word which
occurs so frequently in the prayer. This reading has then pushed out the
more original ~pTT in LXXB 2 Sam. 7.21a and 1 Chron. 17.19a MT.
Accordingly, I read MT here.
85t
7DH, 'as everything': though the reading of MT is supported by LXX

here and by MT 1 Chron. 17.20b, many Hebrew MSS in both places
read ^33, which is supported by KQTQ TCQVTQ in 1 Chron. 17.20b LXX.
86<I
H.>'Q1, 'and is there any nation': the whole verse fairly bristles with
textual problems, and any attempt to solve them can only be tentative.
It may be helpful to set out the main witnesses in tabular form, in their
Hebrew retroversions where appropriate (Figure 3, p. 81).
The real difficulties begin with the second clause 7.23bi "O^n ~)$K
DVfPK. MT takes DTl^K as plural here, but this is inconsistent with the
ensuing singular pronominal anaphora in 23bot2,3. Moreover, 1 Chron.
17.21 MT and all the major versions take it as singular. The LXX of both
Samuel and Chronicles read the verb as a hiphil with objective suffix
'whom a god led', a reading adopted by McCarter (1984: 234 ad loc.).
However, the hiphil of ~[^n with Yahweh as subject and Israel as object
80
is virtually a terminus technicus for Yahweh's guidance of Israel in the

wilderness (Deut. 8.2, 15; Isa. 63.12-13; Jer. 2.6; Hos. 2.16[14]; Amos
2.10; Ps. 106.9; 136.16), a meaning which is inappropriate here.
Accordingly, I read "J^n with 1 Chron. 17.21bcti. I do not, however,
follow Chronicles in reading DTT^Nn with the definite article, which has
been added to conform to Chronicles' more usual style, whereas the
style normal for Samuel is without the article. The plural verb in
7.23bai MT may be a 'theological' correction to avoid any suggestion
that any other nation was visited in redemption by the one true God in
the same way as Israel. But the correction was not carried through, producing the inconsistent pronominal anaphora noted above, and leading
to the LXX readings ID^n.
The next major difficulties arise in 7.23btt4, where MT reads m&I^l
fJTIK1? mtOil if?nan DD*?. While in itself the mixture of plural and
singular second person reference is not impossible (cf. Deut 1.20-21
and often), here second person reference to Israel (1) is inconsistent
with second person reference to Yahweh in 23b(3; and (2) is in any case
inappropriate in the context of a prayer being addressed to Yahweh. Of
the major versions, only 7.23 Peshitta 1*7 has a preposition here, which
can be explained as an inadvertent carrying through of the 1^ that correctly accompanies the two preceding infinitives. One might then hazard the guess that the reading DD^ arose from an earlier 1^ [m&IÎ]
[n^nan] ^D, where the 'PD has slipped in from 21a|3, at the same time as
23ba4 was misread to correspond to 2lap. I take the original reading of
23ba4 to have been nitnil 171*7)13 mvxb (cf. Deut 10.21), and the wide
variety of misreadings in the witnesses to have been triggered by the
misreading of m'piia as lYTna/nYTlia under the influence of 7.21ap. I
can only assume that m&^l has accidentally dropped out of 1 Chron.
17.21bo4.
f SIN1? in 7.23ba4 is also problematic, since Yahweh's mighty and
awesome acts are otherwise associated with the deliverance from
Egypt, not with entry into the Promised Land, and the former is what
the context leads one to expect here. Only Peshitta in the above table
with its reading "|QI? 'JSQ3 pn ^ matches 7.23 MT in reading p
here. Although the suggestion to read prf? here (so, e.g., Rehm 1937:
74) is graphically attractive, I am not sufficiently persuaded that semantically an appropriate sense can be derived from this verb, which
always seems to retain its basic sense of speed, hurry: ? 'to spirit away
nations before your people...' Accordingly, I accept the reading Cha1?
2 Sam. 7.23 MX
1 Chron. 17.21 MT
2 Sam. 7.23 LXX
1 Chron. 17.21 LXX

2 Sam. 7.23 Peshitta
2 Sam. 7.23 MT
1 Chron. 17.21 MT
2 Sam. 7.23 LXX
1 Chron. 17.21 LXX

2 Sam. 7.23 MT
1 Chron. 17.21 MT
2 Sam. 7.23 LXX
1 Chron. 17.21 LXX

Figure 3: Retroverted Textual Readings for 2 Sam. 7.23 // 2 Chron. 17.21
82
here, since (1) "^SO NN CTI3, where NN is/are (a) noun(s) or a pronoun
referring to nations, is a well-attested locution (Exod. 23.28-30; Josh.
24.12, 18; Judg. 2.3; 6.9); (2) the reading Bha1? thus makes sense of D^3
at the end of 7.23; (3) reference to Yahweh's driving out nations before
his people would thus come in its expected place in the sequence of
events enumerated in 7.23. The reading "]U"1^ in 7.23bc(4 MT thus must
have arisen from a misreading of $"13*7 as fHN4?, perhaps influenced by
the preceding n^nan/m^nan, which then attracted to itself the suffix of
the following "jiltf. Peshitta 7.23 is an attempt to read this misreading
with the knowledge that Yahweh's spectacular acts (hzwn') are against
the land of Egypt.
Finally, 7.23by MT rn^NI D'13: on the reading ehJ1? adopted above
D'Ha is expected, but DTI^K in any form is not, since there is no parallel
use of 2?"13 of Yahweh driving out the nations' gods. Despite the evidence among the witnesses for some form of QTI^N here (including
D'^nNI in 4QSama), it is notable that of the witnesses which read Bha1?
in the above table, only LXX 7.23 has anything corresponding to vn^NI,
namely D^HN, which may rather be a desperate attempt to make the
text fit the demands of ^"13^ than a simple misreading of 7.23by MT. A
reading DTftKI, to which 7.23 4QSama, LXX and Peshitta all testify,
might possibly arise from a misplaced insertion of a marginal DTf?^,
accidently omitted from the end of the following v. 7.24. It is not evident how this became vn'pNl in 7.23 MT. Accordingly, I read 0^13 alone
here.
The anacoluthon involved in the switch from third person predications of a hypothetical god in 23ba to second person predications of
Yahweh in 23bpy is hardly surprising, in view (1) of the length of the
utterance, and (2) of the fact that all the actions in question are those
normally predicated of Yahweh.
87
)]lDm, 'you firmly established': 1 Chron. 17.22a ]nm. LXX B has

f]ioiuaaa<; here, whereas it translated TGD1 in 7.13b by avopOcoaco. In
view of D1?1)]? 1S3 here, as in the parallel expression with TU3D1 in 7.13b,
I retain MT ]JDm.
88
Dpn, 'establish': 1 Chron. 17.23ap]QK?., 'may it be firm', supported

by LXX 7tiCTTCQ0r|TCG. 2 Sam. 7.25 LXXB TtiCTicoaov would appear to presuppose ]Dn, not Dpn,/7flce Rehm (1937: 52): but p hiphil is not
used transitively elsewhere, and the Lucianic witnesses correct to
832
7uoTCQ0r|TCO. Chronicles and LXX texts thus probably reflect an alternative Hebrew reading (and hence not a specifically Chronistic
adaptation, pace Willi 1972: 147) intended to tone down the boldness
of the petition (as in 7.29, see n. 93 below), as already in 1 Kgs 8.26 =
2 Chron. 6.17, compare 2 Chron. 1.9. But "HI D'pn is a well-attested
idiom (Deut. 9.5; 27.26; 1 Kgs 2.4; 6.12; 8.20; 12.15; 2 Kgs 23.3, 24;
Jer. 33.14), whereas ~Q1 ]QK] is confined to the passages already cited.
Moreover, indirect confirmation of the reading of 2 Sam. 7.25 MT ma
be found in 1 Kgs 8.20a 131 "itOK Tin n HIPP D[P1, 'Yahweh has
established his word which he spoke', where Solomon claims that
Yahweh has fulfilled what David prays for here. On 1 Kgs 8.15-21 as a
Deuteronomistic interpretation of 2 Samuel 7 see my Claim for Power,
Power for Claim (forthcoming).
89L
n:n, 'so that (your name) may be great': for the syntax see below
5.2.2.3, p. 208. 1 Chron. 17.24 în ptn is probably to be explained
as an inadvertent dittograph of 17.23ay owing to homoioteleuton (~IP
D'TIP), which first replaced 17.24aa, but which was then conflated with
the correct reading for 17.24aa, noted in the margin. LXXB 2 Sam. 7.25
27 has suffered an interesting combination of dittography and haplography, whereby the translator's eye passed from the first D'PIP IP in
7.25 to the second in 7.26, which brought back into 7.25 to follow
IP DÎP in 7.25ay the ÎfcT^P Dl'rftK Pitas mrr which follows
DÎP IP in 7.26apy. Then followed 7.25b (but reading HHP1 for HfoPl)
and 7.26aa (omitting "IQK1?), but as soon as the translator reached
^tW^P Dpi1 niKD^ mm in 7.26aa for the second time, his eye
jumped to the similar combination in 27act, thus omitting the intervening words by haplography! By contrast, LXX 1 Chron. 17.23-24 has
undergone a simple process of haplography, with omission of everything between DÎP IP in 23ay and "IQK1? in 24aa
^tOftr ^P DTftK mta:* mrr, 'Yahweh of Hosts, God over Israel':
1 Chron. 17.24ap ^tOftr TftK m3^ mn% 'Yahweh of Hosts, God of
Israel', as in 2 Sam. 7.27aai. LXXB evidently read *?"l(Ds sn^ here (cf.
previous note), as also the Peshitta. However, I stay with ^P DTl'PK
^"ltl?\ as a unique formulation which cannot be accounted for by an
obvious error.
84
91
"|^ n]2K ITQ "1Q^, 'saying, a house I will build you': so the versions.
1 Chron. 17.25a0 n'3 I1? ma1?, but in the only other instances of nâ
]TK where the content of the revelation is given (1 Sam. 9.15; Ruth 4.4),
the same construction is used as here in 2 Sam. 7.27 ("IQK1? + direct
speech). Thus the reading in 1 Chron. 17.25 is part of a pronounced
tendency in Chronicles to abbreviate the text in the closing verses of
the prayer.
92
HQtf ViT ~p~n~n, 'and your words are certain': these words are missing in 1 Chron. 17.26, possibly through homoioarkton with "Dim in
7.28ba = 17.26ba; or it may be due to the abbreviating of the text in
Chronicles noted above.
93
f-m ^Kin, 'be pleased to grant...the blessing': 1 Chron. 17.27aa

"jin'p n'PK'in, 'you have been pleased to bless', probably a change made
by the Chronicler because Yahweh has already made the promise, and
does not need in the Chronicler's view to be urged to keep it.
Chapter 3
DAVID DEFERENT WITH YAHWEH? 2 SAMUEL 5.17-25
3.1. Contextualizing the Text

I demonstrated above in Chapter 1 that with the account of David's
anointing as king over Israel (2 Sam. 5.1-3) we reach a point of temporary closure in the story of David in Samuel: the forward flow of the
narrative pauses in 5.4-16,1 to reflect upon this act as the end of David's
rise to power.2 That rise was consummated when David was anointed
as king over Israel by the elders of the northern group (5.3b). But the
consummation was consequent upon David first solemnly 'in the presence of Yahweh' (miT 'OS'?) binding himself to them by compact
(n>l"13...Dnl7 fTD"1! 5.3a). Although no details of the transaction are
given, the pragmatic implicature is that the elders imposed terms of
acceptance which delimited the scope of David's melek-ship over
Israel, terms to which David committed himself. Let us simply note this
here, as a point to which we will need to return in the final chapter.
But if David's accession to kingship over Israel is an end, it is also a
beginning. For that very act of anointing which crowns all David's
striving hitherto, initiates a further series of struggles which will
occupy David until the day of his death. But of these strugglesstruggles against foes without the realm, to establish political hegemony;
struggles with rivals within the realm, among family and supporters as
well as among declared opponents, to thwart their ambitions and contain their threat; struggles within himself, to balance the exigencies of
royal power against the seductions of private inclinationnone will
1. Admittedly, this section contains the compact account of David's capture of
Jerusalem 5.6-9, but this seems mainly intended to underline the sense of achievement manifested in the surrounding reflective summaries.
2. This remark refers solely to the periodization of the story of David as it is
narrated in Samuel, and should not be read as either arising from or endorsing a
theory about an independent source The History of David's Rise' or the like.
86
occupy us in detail here except one. This struggle we shall find to be

with, against, under one who is neither friend nor foe, supporter nor
rival, kinsman nor stranger, master nor servant, yet all of these; and if
not all at once, then each at different times in the stretch of text before
us.
Yet this particular struggle arises from what is, in the first major section of our text, a strikingly successful partnership between David and
Yahweh. That 5.17-25 constitute the first of three narrative units within
the stretch of text we are concerned with I demonstrated above (see
1.2.5). David finds himself beset, twice in quick succession, by Philistine forces intent on a search-and-destroy mission. The fugitive from
Saul has now become the quarry of his erstwhile protectors. Against
this renewed threat to his life David immediately seeks and finds the
help of Yahweh, who in two encounters inflicts defeat upon the Philistines. Thus the section falls into two clearly defined episodes, 5.17-21;
22-25; each of which narrates a successful repulsion of a Philistine
attack, the second more decisively driving the Philistines back to their
home territory.
3.2.1. What Is the Question?
In the final section of Chapter 1 I briefly expounded the general
significance of the 'd'-word terminology used in many of my chapter
titles. The section of text which is the focus of this present chapter narrates how David's first recourse in dealing with the Philistine threat is
to defer to Yahweh's will by consulting him. Not only so, but we shall
see how in the first incident that, although as narrated the effective
action is his, David deferentially ascribes the victory to Yahweh's
supernatural intervention. But whereas deference is more implicit than
explicit in the first episode of this section, the second episode, on the
other hand, makes quite a point of it. Here Yahweh gives David
detailed instructions for an action in which Yahweh is to play the leading role. David's subservient compliance to these divine instructions is
prominently reported (5.25a).
In this section of our text, then, it would appear that David is consistently deferent to Yahweh. But in that case why 'deferent with' in my
chapter title rather than 'deferent to\ and why the question mark? It
will be a good part of the business of this chapter, and of the following
3. David Deferent with Yahweh ? 2 Samuel 5.17-25
87
two chapters, to answer these questions fully. All I need say here is
that, as against 'deferent to', 'deferent with' is intended to suggest a
form of behaviour that is not as wholly subservient, that has rather
more of calculation and rather less of sincerity in it, than the former
expression might imply. The fact that here in 5.17-25, unlike the situations that obtain later in 2 Samuel 6 and 7, David's life is in danger
needs to be borne in mind in assessing his relation to Yahweh in this
section. It is easy not to give sufficient cognizance to this at first
because, given that this section comes at the beginning of our stretch of
text, we do not have as yet the context to make it significant. But immediate recourse to Yahweh when one's life is threatened is one thing
(5.17-25), continuing to consult his interests when they may very well
cut across one's own is a very different matter (2 Sam. 6,7). Thus the
question mark in the title is intended to reinforce the significance of the
chosen preposition, and to alert the reader to the possibility that all is
not necessarily as it seems on the surface of this compact and matter-offact narrative. With these points in mind, let us look in detail at the two
pericopes which make up this section.
3.2.2. Verses 17-21
The general style and content of the opening clauses (5.17a) of our section indicate that it is part of a wider narrative. The initial wayyiqtol
verb form, the incidental way its subject 'the Philistines' is introduced
into the narrative, the allusive reference to David's anointing as king of
Israel, all these features taken together suggest continuation of a narrative thread rather than the opening of a completely fresh narrative. The
new plot sequence is initiated by the connection of the two verbs
'heard...came up' (1l7jn...'iuaejrl 5.17aa,p): 'as soon as the Philistines
heard that David had been anointed as king of Israel, all the Philistines
came up in search of David' (5.17a). But presupposed, mainly from
what has earlier been narrated in the story of David in Samuel, is readerly knowledge of why David's anointing is of such concern to the
Philistines.
The phrase 'to seek out David' (111 HK ttJpn1? 17a(3) in order to capture or to kill him, is a resonant one for readers of the story of David.
Not only does this exact locution itself occur twice in the narrative of
Saul's pursuit of David (1 Sam. 24.3[2]; 26.2), but more, taking
account of its various other transforms,3 the expression 'to seek (the life
3.
Thus in n eton, 'seek David', in 1 Sam. 23.14, 25; 27.1, 4; 023 DK KJpD
88
of) David' (Til [0B3] n tfpn) is thematic in the whole of that narrative. That there what eventually brought to an end David's desperate
evasions of Saul's murderous pursuit (1 Sam. 27.1-4) was precisely his
finding among the Philistines a place of safety (1 Sam. 27.5)4 gives a
distinctly ironic note to the use of the expression here. Moreover, considering that then just one Philistine ruler, Achish of Gath, was enough
to deter Saul from pursuing David (1 Sam. 27.3-4), the fact that now
'all the Philistines' (DTO^S *?D 2 Sam. 5.17ap)5 come in search of
David indicates the extent of Philistine concern at the grave threat the
erstwhile vassal of Achish now poses to them as independent king of
Israel. But more directly to the point, by magnifying the Philistine force
against him, the expression heightens the scope of David's victories
over them here.
Faced with so great a threat, then, it is hardly surprising that as soon
as David hears of the Philistine aggression he takes evasive action by
'going down to the fortress'6 (5.17b). The basic parallel in construction
in, 'seek David's life' 1 Sam. 20.1; 22.23; 23.15; 25.29.
4. For the specialized sense of DlpQ here, 'place of safety, safe haven', cf.
2 Sam. 7.10 below, and see the author's discussion in Murray 1990: 314-19.
5. As with other parallel expressions, it is difficult for us to know how such an
expression was read pragmatically, but it is probably a reasonable guess that it at
least implicates participation by all five of the standard Philistine polities.
6. The identity of the fortress in question is much discussed by commentators.
We are concerned here not with what historical reality if any may lie behind the
narrative, but simply with the implicatures of the text. In the event, these are not
easy to determine. On the one hand, in the near context the brief narrative of
David's capture of the fortress (rniHQ) of Zion in 5.7-9 and its appropriation as his
royal residence (5.9) provides an available contextual referent. However, if 5.7-9 is
relevant context for the interpretation of miôn in 5.17 as the fortress of Zion, then
the verb TV1, 'went down', in 5.17 creates coherence difficulties: (a) contextually,
since none of the intervening text carries any implicature to the effect that David is
not still resident (DCCH 5.9) in the fortress of Zion; (b) pragmatically, since for
strategic reasons a fortress would normally occupy higher ground than the residential area it protects. Then further the use of the verb n*?#, 'go up', twice in 5.19 of
an attack putatively from Zion into the lower-lying valley of Rephaim is not the
most perspicuous way to express the state of affairs. On the other hand, in the wider
context of the story of David in Samuel the term niKOn tout court refers, not to the
fortress of Zion, but to a stronghold established by David at the cave of Adullam:
cf. 1 Sam. 22.4-5; 24.23[22]; 2 Sam. 23.14 = 1 Chron. 11.16. Moreover, the verb
TV is twice used of those going to this stronghold: in 1 Sam. 22.1, where the point
of departure for David's kin is presumably the Bethlehem area; and in 2 Sam. 23.13
= 1 Chron. 11.15, where the point of departure is not inferable. Admittedly, 1 Sam.
89
of the two parts of 5.17 is pointed up by this semantic opposition in the

second set of main verbs, as shown in Figure 4, p. 90.
Thus there is a clear initial emphasis on hearing and responding.
Each party hears of a development to which each must respond immediately.7 But of the two it is David's hearing and responding that is
going to be most operative in the narrative, since his hearing and responding will trigger the decisive action. We shall come to see how the
matter of David's hearing and responding is made thematic throughout
our stretch of text: what it is he hears, from whom he hears it, and how
he responds to it.
The particular shaping of the narrative here subtly moulds the reader's subliminal responses. First, whereas the Philistines' response8 is
separated by a seven-word explanatory clause from their hearing, nothing at all intervenes between 'David heard' (UQEH) and 'he went down'
(1T1). The rhetorical effect of this is to suggest a speedier response to
events by David than by the Philistines. Admittedly, this is to some
extent discourse governed, in that, owing to its initial position in the
episode, explicit explanation of the Philistine action is needed, whereas
explanation for David's action may be drawn as an explicature from
what has already been narrated about the Philistines. Nonetheless, to
24.23[22] uses if?!?, 'go up', of David's return to this same fortress, but this is from
the lower-lying En-Gedi region (24.1 [23.29]). Thus whereas the verb "7T is clearly
and naturally used of going to Adullam from higher parts of Judah it is difficult to
envisage under what circumstances it would be the natural term to describe David's
going to the fortress of Zion. Further, we must add to this the absence of any other
evidence for rm^Qn/rn^Qn tout court as a perspicuous designation of Zion.
Indeed, apart from 2 Sam. 5.7, 9, there is just one other (effectively) unambiguous
instance in the Hebrew Bible of any of this group of nouns being used in reference
to Zion: nrniiQ in Isa. 29.7. Thus I take all the foregoing considerations to indicate
a pragmatic reference to the fortress of Adullam by rnilSQn in 2 Sam. 5.17.
7. A character's receiving and reacting to significant news is of course a commonplace as a plot device in all kinds of narrative, from Greek tragedy to modern
farce, from folk tale to grand opera: for some other biblical instances see, e.g., Gen.
34.5; 1 Sam. 14.22; 22.1, 6; 23.25; 25.39; 2 Sam. 4.1; Neh. 3.33 [4.1]; 4.1, 9 [4.7,
15]; 6.16. But note especially 1 Sam. 7.7, with a balanced structure strikingly similar to 2 Sam. 5.17 (see Figure 5, p. 90); and see also 1 Sam. 23.25, with a consecution of expressions equivalent to those in 2 Sam. 5.17.
8. In the wider context of the story of David in Samuel, the narrative pause
between 5.3, the narration of David's anointing as king over Israel, and 5.17 as the
Philistines' first reaction to this event, reinforces this subliminal sense of the
Philistines' slowness to respond.
The Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, so all the Philistines came up to search out David
David
heard
and went down to the fortress
Figure 4: Semantico-structural Paralleling in 2 Sam. 5.17
1 Sam. 7.7
The Philistines heard that the Israelites had assembled at Mizpah, so the lords of the Philistines came up against
Israel.
2 Sam. 5.17
The Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, so all the Philistines
came up to seek out David.
1 Sam. 7.7
When the Israelites got to hear of this they were in fear before the Philistines.
2 Sam. 5.17
When David
got to hear of this he went down to the fortress.
Figure 5: Parallels between 1 Sam. 7.7 and2 Sam. 5.17
3. David Deferent with Yahweh? 2 Samuel 5.17-25
91
leave this information to be supplied by the reader in this way is a mark

of the compression of this narrative, given the numerous examples elsewhere of the repetition of material to make causal connections clearer.9
Further information about the Philistine attack against David is given
in 5.18. As such, it could have been incorporated into 5.17b as a report
to David, thus: either 'David heard that the Philistines had come and
made their dispositions in the valley of Rephaim,10 so he went down...'
(...TTI n-'KEn pom TOD DTKZT^SJ ita o -m jo^'i); or 'it was
reported to David, "the Philistines have come, etc."' (10^ "1111? "in
"HI ltd).11 Instead, the information has been postponed to a backtracking clause in 5.18, with the result that the temporal relation of what is
narrated in 5.18 to what is narrated in 5.17b is not made at all precise.12
9. Thus the text might have read, e.g., intipn1? DTHZfra fts O in jJQBh,
'David got to hear that the Philistines had come up to seek him'.
10. The choice of the valley of Rephaim as a base of operations for the Philistines is readily understandable within inferable presuppositions of the text, both
contextual and pragmatic. First, given the implicature from the immediately preceding context that David is ensconced in Jerusalem when the Philistines set out on
their operation, the valley of Rephaim provides probably the most suitable locale
near to Jerusalem where the Philistines could marshall their forces out of sight and
range of the city. The higher and broader south-western hill obtrudes between the
Valley of Rephaim and the south-eastern hill on which the city of David was
located. Second, the wider David narrative, in 2 Sam. 23.13-17, also has the Philistines encamp there on an ostensibly different campaign against David, thus suggesting that the locale could be pragmatically presupposed as a base favoured by
the Philistines in their struggle against David. A further possible presupposition is
that such a base would allow the Philistines to cut David off from help from the
north. However, while any or all of these extratextual pragmatic considerations may
govern the identification of the valley of Rephaim as the Philistine base of operations, a significant intratextual connection may well be equally or more operative:
the valley of Rephaim will have lain on the route taken by David in bringing the ark
to Jerusalem from Baal Judah. We shall see in our close reading of 2 Sam. 6 in the
next chapter what significance this has for the ark's journey.
11. Note that exactly this latter speech form is used in 6.12a below, where it
repeats in heightened form information already given in 1 Ib.
12. The syntax therefore allows any one of a range of implicatures, varying
from no overlap to considerable temporal overlap between the Philistines' and
David's manoeuvres. The most probable discourse relation between 5.18 and 5.17,
however, is (1) that IfcO, 'arrived', 18a backtracks to the action of 1^1, 'came up',
in 17ap, but now presents it as complete; and (2) that "KEton, 'they made their dispositions', 18b now makes explicit a threatening detail broadly (and hence weakly)
implicated in Til PR t^pl1? "friTl, 'they came up to seek David', but which need
92
But precision on the point is of no particular concern to our text, where

the governing narrative strategy is rather to forge a direct link between
the Philistine threat, as graphically re-presenced by 5.18, and David's
'immediate' resort to Yahweh in 5.19. Thus it also serves to separate
David's merely negative initial reaction to the bare news of the Philistine advance, his tactical withdrawal to 'the stronghold' (5.17bp), from
his positive reaction to more detailed information, his consultation of
Yahweh on what to do.
A compressed technical expression, 'David inquired of Yahweh'
(mrrn in *?2h 5.19aa), which recurs in 5.23, is used of David in
5.19. The procedure involved is nowhere explicitly described, but a
comparison of relevant biblical passages13 indicates priestly14 manipulation of a lots mechanism. If so, this could only yield a yes or no
answer, and questions would have to be appropriately framed. Accordingly, David here asks such a question, but it is double: 'shall I go up...
will you deliver them...?' (...mnrn...if7W*r7 5.19a|3).15 Is this simply a
not yet have ensued when the action of 17b took place. That is to say, between the
arrival of and the full deployment of the Philistine forces David has received the
news and withdrawn to his fortress.
13. As used of David the expression occurs elsewhere in the story of David in
Samuel in 1 Sam. 23.2, 4; 30.8; 2 Sam. 2.1. Other instances are Judg. 20.23, 27;
1 Sam. 10.22 (of the Israelites); 1 Sam. 28.6 (of Saul); all with mm and Judg.
20.18 (Israel); 1 Sam. 14.37 (Saul); 1 Chron. 14.10, 14 // 2 Sam. 5.19, 23 (David);
all with DTT'PN. Most of these texts are in varying ways allusive, presupposing readerly knowledge of the mechanism involved. However, they do tend to supplement
one another, allowing us to reconstruct much of what is (probably) being presupposed in any given instance. For a detailed discussion of the relevant biblical material see now Kleiner 1995: 28-33.
14. Priestly involvement is clearly implied in 1 Sam. 23.1-12, where it is evident (23.9) that the ephod brought by the priest Abiathar from Nob (cf. 23.6 with
22.20) is manipulated by him, in a way not specified, to give the divine answers to
David's questions in 23.10-12. Although the expression iT)!T3 ^NEi, 'inquire of
Yahweh', does not happen to occur in 23.10-12 (it has, however, occurred in 23.2,
4), the procedure is otherwise analogous to that in the texts listed above in n. 13.
Moreover, other instances either involve a priest 1 Sam. 14.36-37; cf. 14.3, 18; or
are expressly located in cultic contexts, Bethel Judg. 20.18; cf. miT 'B1? 20.23, 26;
Mizpah (? with Samuel as priest) 1 Sam. 10.22.
15. The double question form also occurs in similar inquiries in 1 Sam. 14.37;
23.11; 30.8. 1 Sam. 14.37 casts no light on the point at issue here, since in this instance Yahweh refuses to respond; nor does 1 Sam. 30.8, where the form of both
question and answer are parallel to our present passage. In 2 Sam. 2.1 two questions are put and answered separately, but here the second question, of where David
93
compressed representation of two separate, but related, questions,

notionally open to different answers, and the second put only if the first
has been answered affirmatively? Or does the double question reflect a
single consultation of the lot, the assumption then being that both questions are necessarily only susceptible of the same answer?16 Our text
appears to envisage one consultation, in that in the event Yahweh's
reply to David here treats David's questions as compound, and gives to
both questions one affirmative answer that explicitly links them: 'go up,
for I shall certainly deliver...' (...]n ]D] O rbu 5.19b). Still, whatever may have to be presupposed about the mechanism for effecting
this exchange, the text actually obtrudes no mention of personnel or
procedures17 between David and Yahweh. Thus, within our narrative,
only the fact that David seeks and receives a message from Yahweh is
important, the means of its mediation here unimportant. The point is
reinforced later by a similarly focused presentation of the second incident in 5.22-25. We shall find, however, that both the 'how' and the
'who' of mediation between Yahweh, David and Israel becomes much
should go, is more obviously a second-order question. However, in 1 Sam. 23.1112 MT, what is put as a double question in 23.1 la, is treated as though it was two
questions in 23.1 Ib-12, with only the second being answered initially, and the first
requiring to be put again to receive separate answer. In fact, again these are two
relatively independent questions requiring separate answers, and so this text does
not provide a reliable analogy to 2 Sam. 5.19.
16. In Judg. 20 the Israelite force twice (20.18, 23) receives a positive answer
from Yahweh to two inquiries about 'going up' against the Benjaminites, yet twice
suffers severe defeats. In fact, on neither occasion is a second question, about Yahweh's giving victory, explicitly put. Nor is it on the third occasion the first question
is put (20.28a), but this time Yahweh's positive reply implicitly answers such a
second question, by adding the assurance-of-victory formula (20.28b). The discourse implicature of this rather striking sequence, therefore, is that this second
question was constantly presupposed by the askers as implicit in their first question,
and that a positive answer to the question explicitly put was assumed to imply a
positive answer to the implied question also. On the other hand, the actual unfolding of events in Judg. 20 demonstrates that it was not inconceivable to a biblical
narrator that Yahweh might very well answer yes to the first, explicit, question, but
no to the second, implied, question. The rhetorical message thus dramatically conveyed is that Israel could not simply presume upon Yahweh always to guarantee
victory in battle.
17. As, e.g., happens in the David story in 1 Sam. 23.6-12; 30.7-8; note also the
instances of prophetic mediation of oracles to David, p. 109 n. 52. That mediation
is specifically mentioned elsewhere justifies seeing its non-mention here as a significant narrative choice.
94
more of an issue in the final section of our stretch of text.

In his seven-word reply, Yahweh echoes from David's question
(5.19ay) the conventional 'divine assurance of victory' formula18
(5.19bp) as a firm grounding to his otherwise curt positive command
'go up = attack' (ilÛ 19bcc),19 though he intensifies the formula with an
appositional infinitive.20 Yet for all that this adds to its reassuring
promise,21 Yahweh's response is as brief and general as it can well be,
thus leaving David free to decide himself how to act in detail. But of
these details we are told no more than that David attacked via Baal Perazim (20a).22 To this assertion in his own voice the implied narrator
adds a very terse, highly conventional, statement of the victory gained:
'David struck them down there' (20a). Both assertions take just another
18. This is I believe a clearer label for this conventional locution than my earlier
use of 'committal-formula' (Murray 1979), an anglicizing of the German Ubergabe/Ubereignungsformel. My discussion in that article of the narrative function of
versions of the formula in Judg. 4.7, 9, 14 (Murray 1979: 174-77) included critique
of the rigid form-critical and traditio-historical inferences drawn by W. Richter
(Richter 1966: 21-24; 182-85).
19. This way of Yahweh's ordering his reply is matched in Judg. 20.28; 1 Sam.
23.4; 30.8.
20. For the intensifying infinitive absolute as a nominative appositional cf.
Waltke and O'Connor 1990: 584.
21. There are only two other occurrences of versions of the formula using the
intensifying infinitive: Num. 21.2; Judg. 11.30. However, these are both put into
human mouths in vows, in which Yahweh's fulfilment of the terms of the formula
is the desideratum, and thus the condition for fulfilment of the vow. Thus 2 Sam.
5.19 is the only instance of the 'divine assurance of victory' formula where Yahweh's own undertaking is expressed in the intensifying form. However, the intensifying infinitive is twice used by Yahweh in a differently formulated reply to David
in 1 Sam. 30.8 ^n ^m r&D afan 'D *]!*], 'pursue, for you will certainly catch up
(with them) and deliver (them)'.
22. The location of Baal Perazim, not mentioned under this name outside our
text and the Chronicles parallel, is not known, but the pragmatic implicature of our
text is that it was in the vicinity of the valley of Rephaim. A Mt Perazim (THD
D'lTB) is cited as a well-known locale for a terrible act of Yahweh in Isa. 28.2la,
which the parallel half-line, unless citing a separate event, locates in the region of
Gibeon (JIJOB pQJO). The flood imagery in the preceding context in Isa. 28.17-19
raises the distinct possibility that that text is exploiting a tradition about Mt Perazim
quite similar to our present narrative (see n. 24 below). If so, we can conjecture that
Baal Perazim was situated on a height (Mt Perazim) to the north and west of the
valley of Rephaim, in the general vicinity of the vale of Gibeon, and having ready
access to the valley of Rephaim.
3. David Deferent with Yahweh? 2 Samuel 5.17-25
95
seven words in the Hebrew (TO Dtf Dm D^~fi ^103 ITT Km 20a).
By contrast, far more eloquent is what David says about the victory
after the event: 'Yahweh burst over my enemies before me like the
bursting forth of a flood of storm-water', in the Hebrew a further set of
seven words (DSQ pSD 'B1? ^K HK mrP pa 20a). Just as the narrator's colourless statements are poetically effaced in David's vivid simile,23 so is David's victory ideologically effaced in Yahweh's triumph,24
23. Its precise import has however to be guessed at. But in view of the incident's general locale, the use of f "ID to describe the breaching of a city wall by military
force is not especially in point. Given the probable implied locale for Baal Perazim
as in the hills bordering the valley of Rephaim (see previous note), the simile is that
of a flood of storm-water sweeping all before it as it rushes on to the plain. The
special nuance conveyed by pD may well be that of a sudden burst of pent-up
storm-water through a barrier of debris accumulated in a wadi since the last rainstorm. It may have been that a particular wadi connecting Baal Perazim with the
valley-plain of Rephaim was especially subject to such blockages and thus notable
for irruptions of storm-water. Given the uncertainty of implicature discussed in the
next note, the comparison may be intended to depict, either (a) the irresistible irruption of David's troops against the hapless Philistines as like a wall of storm-water
rushing down a wadi and sweeping all before it; or (b) an actual storm theophany of
Yahweh unleashing an overwhelming tide of floodwater against the Philistines.
Isaiah 28.21 associates a theophany of Yahweh in judgment with a Mt Perazim, in a
context which has just powerfully invoked flood imagery (28.17-19). Assuming the
general identity of this latter locale with Baal Perazim (see previous note), this
gives further general evidence in favour of the storm-flood interpretation of our
metaphor. I do not necessarily assume that the Isaiah text refers to the very same
traditional incident as our text, though that is quite possible, but claim only that it
provides other evidence that a hostile action of Yahweh connected with a stormflood is there located in the same general locale as in our present text. Judging from
the Robinson and Smith map of the environs of Jerusalem (reproduced in TAB, 73),
a watercourse which fits the above requirements is offered by the unnamed southward extension of the Wadi Beit Hanina, at the western end of the Plain of
Rephaim.
24. David's assertion and the narrator's assertion are coherent with at least three
possible implicatures: (a) Yahweh was active only in and through the effective
fighting of David and his men; (b) Yahweh's action was a separate phenomenon,
discernible alongside the human efforts; (c) Yahweh's was the sole action; there
was no actual fighting by David and his men. In this last case the narrative statement in 5.20a2 is truthfully assertable on the supposition that Yahweh was in some
sense a member of David's forces. The reader is given no further pointer here for
choosing between these possible implicatures. We shall see that the account of the
parallel incident below 5.22-25 adopts option (b) above. On the other hand, the
variant reading in the Chronicles parallel here falls clearly into option (a): pD
96
wonderingly ascribed to him by the awestruck protege whose interests25

Yahweh prosecuted. Moreover, David memorializes the event as Yahweh's victory in the name26 he gives27 to the locale of its accomplishment. The reader will encounter David again, in less auspicious
circumstances (6.8 below), ruefully reprising both the form and the
terms in which he here expresses his wonder at and thanks for Yahweh's timely intervention on his behalf.
Yet another set of seven words (5.21) concludes the narrative of this
first incident. The anaphora, pronominal and locative, of 'they abandoned there' (D$ "QTin 2la) refers us back a full 16 words, back
beyond the naming (20b) and David's speech (20a3.4), to David's defeat
of the Philistines (20aj.2),28 thereby showing how much the reporting of
David's words at this point has dischronologized the narrative.29 If
narrative chronology were the operative factor, v. 21 might easily have
followed immediately on from 20a2,30 with David's speech (20a34) and
D'D f~IDD ""TH "niK HN DTT^Nn, 'God has burst out against my enemies by my
hand, etc.' 1 Chron. 14.1 lap.
25. '33^ occurs in a relatively stressed part of the clause, i.e. the end of its own
phrase, and the coincidence of the two first-person suffixed words "3D1? ""TN gives
the suffix extra emphasis.
26. Accordingly, the name is understood to mean something like 'Master/Lord
of overwhelming floodbursts', as a title of Yahweh. That the name, considered as
an instance of topographical onomastics, more readily suggests an original connection with the storm god Baal Hadad, as a site of his cult, is of no significance to us
here.
27. It is technically just possible that K~lp here is intended as indefinite third
person singular 'one named = it was named', but contextually David is the natural
referent. However, the Chronicles parallel 1 Chron. 14.1 Ib has the indefinite third
person plural 1K~lp, 'they called its name = it was named', thus avoiding the third
person singular with its more natural reference to David. Yet Chronicles keeps the
third singular Nip1! in the somewhat more ambiguous context 1 Chron. 13.lib =
2 Sam. 6.7b ('he named it' = ? David named it', or = 'it was named', see p. 127
n. 53 below). In both contexts, however, the attributing of the etiological naming to
David contributes an important dynamic to our text. Accordingly, I construe David
as subject in both cases.
28. D5> 21 a makes a direct referential link to DV) in 20a2. Thus on the principle of
minimum processing effort, the third plural referent of the suffix of DD'T is the most
readily supplied referent for the third plural anaphora in nun.
29. David's statement in 20a3.4 is more reflective than one might expect in the
height of battle (cf. 21), and the etiological naming of the locale must be a matter of
post-battle celebration.
30. Note how in the diagram of structural parallels between the two episodes
97
the naming (20b) concluding the episode. That this has not been done
points up how the rhetoric of the text is far better served by placing
David's words as an ejaculative response, as though wrought out of
immediate recognition of Yahweh's effective action in the victory, than
it would have been by woodenly preserving a strict narrative chronology. Moreover, v. 21, as a rather more open-ended statement than
20a3 4.b, makes a better lead-in to the second episode, and offers better
balance to the latter's decisive conclusion (25b).
The Philistines' abandonment of their divine images31 (2la) is both
an index of the sheer panic of their flight, and an implicit admission
of the superiority of David's god, Yahweh, whose storm-theophany
induced their panic-stricken abandonment. Little wonder, then, that
'David took them up, and his men' (V2J3K1 TH DKftn 21b)32 from the
field of battle, inferably as trophies of the victory achieved. This in
itself hardly conclusive assertion is the rather abrupt close-out of this
first narrative episode. The text strangles off the nascent readerly questions; where did they take them and what did they do with them?33 Yet
the assertion that provokes the suppressed questions evidently must be
made. Why? Clearly, because it dramatizes the divinely wrought reversal of fortune. The Philistines who, in order to seek out OOpm1?) David,
had carefully set themselves up in the valley of Rephaim (17a(3,18) with
their divine images as guarantors of victory (as the reader can now read
back), abandon (*QTin) all to David, including their own gods, in a desperate flight to save their lives. But we readers will also find an ironic
resonance from 21b in David's 'taking up' the ark as a trophy of
battle34 in the next chapter.35
(see Figure 9, p. 108 below) 20ai.2 together with 21 correspond to 25 of the second
episode.
31. Presumably images of gods associated with battles, taken on campaign to
ensure victory. Thus I see no difference of substance between D!TD2$J? here and
DiTn^K, used in 1 Chron. 14.12a, and implied by the LXX readings.
32. Given that the compound subject immediately follows, the singular verb
puts some stress on David as the responsible operative.
33. The most likely pragmatic implicature is that David and his men then place
them in the shrine of Yahweh as a votive thank-offering. This is, at any rate, what
the Philistines did with the ark in 1 Sam. 5.2. It seems to be to avoid this implicature that the Chronicles' account, 1 Chron. 14.12b, tells us instead that David gave
orders to burn them. On the Chronicler's pragmatic presuppositions David would
obey Deuteronomic injunctions (Deut 7.5; 12.3) to destroy foreign divine images.
34. Thus in 6.3a(3 (4aa) servitors acting on David's orders 'take up' (inK2n)
98
3.2.3. Verses 22-25

The Philistines mount a second operation remarkably similar to the
first. Verbally 5.22 is a compressed version of 5.17-18, shorn of the
latter's minimal explanatory detail, as can be observed in the following
tabulation (Figure 6, p. 99). The verb-adverb anaphora of the opening
words of 5.22, however, obviates the need for detail here by activating
recollection of 5.17, in order to broadly define the context for the
second episode: 'once more the Philistines came up' (DTKB^S Til? 1DCH
Hl^l?1?). That is, we are led to assume that 5.22 introduces a follow-up
attack, employing similar tactics to the previous unsuccessful operation, and towards a similar end.
Yet there is much we are not told that we could have been told. For a
start, we are given no further insight into Philistine motivation for this
second attack, neither their thoughts on their previous reversal, nor the
thinking behind their apparent persistence in previously unsuccessful
tactics, making their dispositions precisely as in the first incident.36
Then further, how long elapsed between the two attacks? Where was
David at the time of this second attack, in Jerusalem for example, or at
'the fortress', or elsewhere? We are not told in this episode as we were
in 5.17bp that David 'went down' anywhere on receiving news of the
attack. These questions and observations are put, not in order to suggest
that we ought to have been told these thingsthat would be to seek to
impose our own agenda on the narratorbut rather to highlight how
compressed and precisely focused it is.
The episode is in fact focused around Yahweh's speech in 23af3b-24.
While we are told David again 'inquired of Yahweh' (mrP3 111 ^KEH
23aa), there is this time no direct report of what David said in his question (contrast 19a(3y). The first two words of Yahweh's response, 'do
what had been a Philistine trophy of battle, namely the ark, from where it had been
finally abandoned by them.
35. There is an ironic resonance also in the narrative suppressions/postponements. Thus here the 'taking up' is removal from the battlefield, but the narrative
suppresses mention of removal to any place. In 2 Sam. 6 the relocation of the ark is
already spoken of as removal from (DtBQ r^VTh, 'to take up from there') in 6.2,
but where it is removal to is postponed, and thus suppressed, in the narrative, until
6.9bC^ 1T, 'come to me') and 6.10 (in Ttf ^...T^R, 'to him... to the city of
David').
36. A possibility here which we have no means of checking out is that the reason(s) for the Philistines' return to the valley of Rephaim were taken by the narrator
as so well known as to be presupposable.
17
22
17 The Philistines heard that

22
and all the Philistines came up to seek David...

Again the Philistines came up
18
22
18 So the Philistines had arrived and they made their dispositions in the valley of Rephaim
22
and
made their dispositions in the valley of Rephaim
19
23
19 David consulted Yahweh saying.... Yahweh replied to David, 'Go up...

23 David consulted Yahweh
and he replied
'Do not go up...
Figure 6: Interrelation of Opening Sequences in 2 Sam. 5.17-19, 22-23
100
not go up' (nûn tifr 23a|3), imply at least part of it, but it is unlikely
that from the remainder of Yahweh's long reply the reader can infer
anything else that David said.37 Thus this is a significantly different situation from that in the first episode, where Yahweh's brief response
(19b) virtually exactly mirrored the terms of David's inquiry (19apy).
That is because there Yahweh granted the requests implicit in David's
questions, leaving him to devise his own tactics, whereas here he inferably does not do the former (23ap), and explicitly does not do the latter
(23b-24).
But in the context of vv. 23-24 the response 'do not attack' (nûn $b
23ap) is at first puzzling. For taken by itself, as the Masoretic accentuation indicates it should be,38 the utterance leads the reader to assume
that on this occasion, unlike the first, Yahweh is denying the request
made in David's implied question. Yet, reading on to the instructions
Yahweh then gives to David about disposition of his forces (23b-24)
and his awaiting a sign for action (DH^ rttQI, 'approach them' 23bp;
jHHn, 'act decisively' 24a3), the pull of discourse cohesion tempts the
reader to modify this assumption.39 In view, however, of the deliberate
paralleling, up to this point, of the account of this second incident on
that of the first, the stark diametrical opposition of this prohibitive
(n'PUn N1?) to the earlier permissive (nÛ 19ba) is intentionally arresting. But here the reader is not told of any question(s) being put by
David, so that his inquiry on this occasion has a somewhat perfunctory
air, as though expecting a predictably similar answer to the first occasion. Hence the abrupt and unexpected negative belies this expectation,
and makes what follows from here on stand out as significantly different from what follows from the equivalent point in the first episode.
One difference is immediately obvious to the reader: far from leaving
37. The nature of Yahweh's reply raises difficult pragmatic questions about
how all this detail was thought to have been mediated to David. It is virtually
unimaginable that this could be done through a simple yes/no lot mechanism, and
suggests rather some kind of oracular response. But the text makes no point of this,
and, intriguing as the question may be, its resolution is not important to the points
the text is making.
38. n^n $h> is separated by 'athndh from what Yahweh goes on to say to
David.
39. Indeed, it may well have been the pull of cohesion that anciently triggered
the variant readings here, which all result in modifiers being added to the abrupt
and baldly negated il^D $b, and that recently has prompted many moderns to follow their lead. On these variants and how they arose, see above Ch. 2 n. 6, p. 51.
101
David free to decide his own tactics, on this occasion Yahweh gives
David detailed instructions about what to do. Thus the rest of Yahweh's
reply to David is structured by positive imperatival forms: 'go around'
port 23ba); 'approach' (ntQI 23b|3); 'it must be (that)', virtually 'see to
it (that)' Crri 24a); 'act decisively' (f "inn 24a). Superficially this gives
the impression that the effective action is to be David's, albeit at Yahweh's behest. David is instructed to make a circuit around behind the
Philistine lines and to approach them from a position in front of
Bakaim,40 whence at a given signal he is to make a sudden attack. But
two elements in Yahweh's utterance, though subordinate syntactically
to these imperatival forms, are logically superordinate to all the actions
prescribed to David: 'when you hear the sound of marching...' (~pQ2D
...mi^ 'Tip FIN 24a); and 'for then Yahweh will have advanced ahead
of you...' (...p:i3l? mrr R2T TN "O 24b).
Therein lies a second profound difference from the first incident.
What David does here is secondary to and dependent upon the sovereignly independent and decisive action of Yahweh. The peculiarly
divine character of that action is conveyed by language which draws on
the terminology of theophany.41 Thus the noun illl^, '(divine) marching', recalls the verb "11?2 in the classic descriptions of theophany in
Judg. 5.4 and Ps. 68.8[7], while parallels to the locution pas1?] mrr K2T,
'Yahweh has advanced [ahead of]', occur in Ps. 68.8[7], Judg. 4.14
[Judg. 5.4; Ps. 108.12(11)]; all in contexts referring to Yahweh's role as
divine warrior who fights on behalf of his people. So here (24b) Yahweh as the divine warrior leads the advance against the Philistines in
this, the decisive, battle. The nature of the divine manifestation is condensed into the locution 'when you hear the sound of marching on the
summits of Bakaim/in the tops of the Baka-trees' (iTOS 'Pip HK "j^DOD
D^tonn ^^"Q 24a). Presumably some 'natural' phenomenon, very possibly a storm-wind such as is often associated with the theophany of
40. As with Baal Perazim above, so here Bakaim is not referred to as such outside this account, but the textual implicature is that it nestled in hills (?'summits of
Bakaim' D'fcODH ""CDKH 24a2) overlooking the valley of Rephaim. There is reference
in Ps. 84.7[6] to the vale/valley (pOU) of Baka, in a context which suggests both
that it is in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and that it is a stage in a royal procession with
the ark of Yahweh of Hosts as divine warrior-king. For the connection between
such a procession and David's victories in this locale, see below, pp. 119-20 on 2
Sam. 6.2.
41. On this in general see Jeremias (1977), Mann (1977), Niehaus (1995),
Scriba(1995).
102
Yahweh,42 produced from a grove of trees a sound interpretable by

David and his men as the marching of the divine host to battle. Thus the
sound of the storm gathering in the surrounding hills was a noise at
once confidence-inspiring to the Israelites but panic-inducing to the
Philistines.43 If the reference here is indeed to a storm-theophany, then
this feature runs parallel to the implicature of David's simile for the
earlier incident (20a3.4). But what we have here is Yahweh's account to
David of what is about to happen, not David's account to the world in
general44 of what has just happened. It is Yahweh's speaking, rather
than David's, which dominates the narrative of this incident, just as
does Yahweh's, rather than David's, action.
Yet in the event, the clinching action of this second encounter is
attributed to David in 25b: 'he [David] struck the Philistines down from
Geba (?Gibeah) to the outskirts of Gezer' (12 {njIoaD DTO^S f)K ~p
"IW ~[IO). In other words, David drives the Philistine force out of the
Judaean-Benjaminite hill country,45 right back towards the heartland of
Philistine occupation. This claim goes well beyond v. 21,46 which
implied no more than the routing of the Philistine force from the immediate field of battle. Moreover, the terms of the claim have, as we shall
see in the next chapter, direct relevance for the immediately following
episode in the story of David, his bringing the ark to Jerusalem from
Baal Judah.
But, differently from the account of the first incident, David's active
role in this, the climactic conclusion to the narrative of the two incidents, is pointedly shown by the narrative to be entirely subsidiary to
Yahweh's in two further ways. Implicitly, by being relegated for report
42. Compare above Ch. 2 n. 8, p. 52, and the references given there.
43. The text does not explicitly make such a point, but it would be an easy
implicature to draw for those armed with the necessary pragmatic knowledge about
the relative positions of Bakaim and the valley of Rephaim. It would not be necessary to suppose that the Philistines could hear the actual sound in the trees, but
rather the general noise of the gathering storm.
44. While David's speech in 2033.4 has no addressee specified, the logical link
made by p *?}), 'therefore', with the naming of the locale retrospectively suggests a
general address.
45. For this general point, significant for what follows in 2 Sam. 6, it makes
little difference whether in 25b the reading IDJ, 'Geba', is retained, or nin2,
'Gibeah', is adopted. Compare above Ch. 2 n. 10, p. 53.
46. But in its turn 5.25b does not claim as much as 8.1, which speaks of David's
'subduing' the Philistines (n^'DD11!), and capturing long-standing Philistine territory.
103
after Yahweh's account of his own decisive action (24b), contrast 20a2
vis-a-vis 20a3 4. The deeds of David the warrior-king of Israel are manifestly subordinated to those of Yahweh the divine warrior-king. Explicitly, by also being prefaced with the formula of obedience47 25a:
'David did exactly as Yahweh had instructed him' ("ittffcO p 111 tfm
mrP im^).48 David hears and responds to the specific instructions of
Yahweh, and out of his hearing and responding comes a triumph over
his enemy (25b) to exceed by far his earlier, self-directed, success.
3.3. Narrative Structure and Technique in 5.17-25
The foregoing discussion has shown 5.17-25 to consist of two narrative
episodes, with the same characters in each (the Philistines, David,
Yahweh), the same general locale (the valley of Rephaim), an essentially similar plot outline (the Philistines threaten David; David consults
Yahweh; Yahweh ensures David victory), and an implied temporal
contiguity. Let us first look in some detail at each episode in turn, and
then compare them.
3.3.1. Verses 17-21
The plot sequence of the first episode is moved along by 13 main
verbs.49 Of the 13, almost a half (6) are verbs of hearing, asking and
saying, which between them govern the majority of the text of the
episode. Moreover, the two verbs '(David) asked' (^KffiH 19aa) and
'(Yahweh) replied' ("iDtn 19bct) fall in the middle of this set of 13
verbs. Thus the Philistines react OÎTl) to hearing OIOTI) inferably
unwelcome news about David (17a). David reacts (""IT")) to hearing
(UQH) inferably even more unwelcome news about the hostile Philistine approach (17b). When the Philisitines have positioned themselves
47. In variant forms which we need not detail here, this is, not unexpectedly, a
quite common formula in the Hebrew Bible to express strict human obedience to
divine instructions: cf., e.g., Gen. 6.22 (Noah); Exod. 7.6,20; 12.28, etc. (Moses);
Judg. 6.27 (Gideon), etc.
48. We shall find, in 7.17 below, a verbally distant, but conceptually similar,
ironic echo of this note of sedulous obedience by an underling of Yahweh.
49. ..nQNT..D3'1...N3^...nDN'T...^^^
DNfcn...'nnn...N~ip, '(the Philistines) heard...came up...(David) heard...went
down... (the Philistines) made their dispositions... (David) asked... (Yahweh)
said... (David) came... struck down... said... named... (the Philistines) abandoned ... (David) took up'.
104
Otfori 18), David asks ("]QK l 7.. I 7Ktf v l) Yahweh for support in attack
(19a), and Yahweh speaks (~)DK''l) to assure him of victory (19b). After
the successful attack (DD''<l..Kin 20a) David spontaneously ascribes
("IQ^"'!) to Yahweh the victory (20a), and memorializes it by naming
(Kip) the place (20b). The Philistines abandon CQTJn) the field (2la),
David takes (DKCTI) the spoil (21b). Thus the initial unsolicited hearings
put David into a situation of jeopardy, shutting him up in his fortress.
But deliverance from this confinement in jeopardy starts from his consulting Yahweh. Victory is assured by what Yahweh says in response,
celebrated in what it moves David to say, and perpetually remembered
in the name David gives to this place where Yahweh has secured his
deliverance.
This essentially unidirectional linear plot sequence in the first episode (see Figure 9, p. 108 below), however, gives effect at the same
time to a rhetorical sequence whose balanced items converge from the
two ends of the episode towards its middle. Thus the Philistines come
to take David with force of arms (17ap), but it is David who leaves the
field as victor with the spoils of battle (21b); David is initially forced to
flee for safety to 'the fortress' (17bp), but in the end it is the Philistines
who flee from the field of battle, abandoning all in the process (2la);
the Philistines come (183) and establish themselves in the valley of
Rephaim (18), David comes (KITl) to Baal Perazim and drives them out
(20ai.2); David asks for Yahweh's support (19a), and receives Yahweh's assurance of victory (19b).
Diagrammatically, the structure of this sequence may best be represented as a parabola (see Figure 7, p. 107).50 The stages of the plot
50. Although chiasm has now emerged, as against ring or envelope, as the conventional term for this structural feature of biblical narrative, its basically fourpointed representation of correspondences is too restrictive adequately to present
multiple correspondences in narrative. Hence I prefer instead the graphic form of
parabola, because it can not only accommodate multiple structural correspondences, but also simultaneously represent the linear progression of the plot. But any
graphical presentation of structure neatly focuses attention on the issue of the
complexity and bias inherent in our perception of structure in abstract entities such
as narrative. Besides the points made above in favour of my preference for the
parabola, questions arise about how to show the parabola itself: should the vertex
face upwards or downwards, or right or left? What conscious and/or sublimal perceptions lead one to opt for one of these alternatives? I have opted for vertex downwards, for two conscious reasons: (1) we subliminally/conventionally associate left
to right movement with linear progression (it is the way we read!); (2) we
105
are distributed, arbitrarily at roughly equal intervals, from left to right

in the horizontal plane, to represent the forward movement of the plot
from initiation to conclusion. The appropriate text elements are distributed against these in the vertical plane, also arbitrarily at roughly
equal intervals, but with the corresponding elements in each of the
above-mentioned sets in the same horizontal plane. Thus our diagrammatic parabola deviates from the straight line by declination, and eventually rejoins it by the opposite process of inclination. No significance
should be attached to the evenness of the decline and incline of the two
arcs of the parabola, since this feature is simply a result of the arbitrary
choice of equal intervals for plotting.
Clearly, the plot of the episode turns through 19a and 19b, and these
elements, corresponding closely not only conceptually but also verbally, appropriately occur at the focal point of our diagram, that is, the
vertex of the parabola. The conceptual correspondence of 18 to 20ai 2 is
reinforced not only by the same lexeme (8*0) in each, but also by their
citing the names of the respective locales in similar form (D^S") pQin
// Dîns îOH). On the other hand, the correspondences between 17b(J
and 2la, and 17a(3 and 21b, have no special verbal links, but consist
entirely in the balanced contrariety implicated in their respective
elements.
Two elements within the first episode stand outside this particular
structure. It is readily understandable that 17aa, as offering the reader
general background information relating to the whole narrative unit
5.17-25, should have no corresponding element, either at the end of the
first episode, or at the conclusion of the whole narrative unit. Instead, it
is balanced by another element also without later correspondence,
17ba: the Philistines hear unwelcome news and act accordingly, David
hears unwelcome news and acts accordingly. Further, 20a3.4.b, which
belongs closely with 20ai.2, and thus forms part of the element that corresponds to 18, shows how corresponding elements need not be evenly
balanced. This is because 20a3 4.b, as we indicated above, incorporates
the interpretative meat of this first episode. The lack of neat fit between
these elements and the observed structure simply arises from the fact
subliminally/conventionally associate downward movement with a fall (!) in fortunes and upward movement with a rise (!) in fortunes. Since dramatic narrative,
however short and simple, normally plots the fall and rise of the hero's fortunes
over an explicit or implicit lapse of time, the left-to-right vertex-downward parabola is best suited graphically to depict these features.
106
that, while a particular structural model may represent well certain

important structural features in a text, no one model is capable of
encompassing all of them, or of representing all equally well. Even a
short and arguably simple narrative manifests a complexity of structure
that cannot be categorized without serious loss.
3.3.2. Verses 22-25
The plot sequence of the second, briefer, episode progresses through
just six main verbs, which pare the action down to its barest elements:
'(the Philistines) came up again' (ml7J?l7..1SOvl 22a), 'made their dispositions' (Itfon 22b), '(David) consulted' (^NCn 23aa), '(Yahweh)
replied' ("lam 23a(3), '(David) did' (fojn 25aa), 'struck down' (~p
25b). Moreover, as a linked second episode (ISO''! 'again' 22a), 5.22-25
can dispense with correspondents to the two balanced verbs of hearing
which open the first episode, since the first 'the Philistines heard'
(DTKZJ^S "1DQCH IVact) is embedded in text presupposed by the second
episode, and a correspondent to the second verb 'David heard' (I7QCT1
111 17ba), is a straightforward explicature from 'David consulted'
Omeh in 23aa).
But, just as in the first episode, so in this episode also the two verbs
'consulted' ('PKCCH) and 'replied' ("IQÎ) are at the centre of this smaller
set of plot-devolving verbs. Indeed, as a result of this compression, the
second episode articulates more starkly than the first the basic framework of seeking, hearing and responding to the will of Yahweh. Moreover, in complete contrast to the first episode, this episode is dominated
by speech of Yahweh. Thus the terse opening (22.23aa) leads as soon
as may be to Yahweh's speech, reached after just 11 words as against
the 38 words it takes to reach the comparable stage in the first episode.
Moreover, whereas Yahweh's speech in the first episode is a mere 7 out
of 75 words in the episode, of which 12 are speech by David, in the
second episode of 50 words, 26 are speech by Yahweh, as against none
being speech by David.
The parabolic rhetorical structure of the second episode is even more
transparent than in the first (see Figure 8, p. 107). Its conclusion closely
balances its opening, the 13 words of v. 25 answering to the 1051 of 2223aa, with 25a corresponding to 23aa, and 25b with 22.
51. Adding these 23 words to the 26 of Yahweh's speech makes 49: the word
unaccounted for is "IDS'1! 23a|3, not itself counted as part of the 26 words of
Yahweh's speech.
Philistines Philistines
hear
seek David
as 'plunder'
David
hears
David
leaves
10
Yahweh
agrees
David
prevails
David
ascribes
Philistines
abandon
David
plunders
Philistines
Philistines David
asks
deploy
Yahweh
Figure 7: Plot and Rhetorical Structure in 2 Sam. 5.17-21
1
Philistines
deploy
David asks
Yahweh
3
Yahweh
prohibits
3'
Yahweh
instructs
2'
David
obeys
David routs
Philistines
Figure 8: Plot and Rhetorical Structure in 2 Sam. 5.22-25
108
The speech of Yahweh is clearly the central turning-point for this

episode, and there is a straightforward correspondence between the
other elements in the episode. Thus the Philistines come up and
(re)occupy the valley of Rephaim (22), but David drives them right
back to their heartlands (25b); David consults Yahweh (23aa), and in
the event has to carry out the divine plan (25a); this divine plan is different from David's implied inquiry (23a|3.b-24). The correspondences
here function almost entirely at the conceptual level, with little in the
way of lexemic links between corresponding elements: 'as Yahweh
instructed him' (miT liT)^ "ICNO 25a0), however, matches 'David consulted Yahweh' (mrrn TO ^Wti^ 23aa), and note the balance of the
place names in 22b and 25b respectively.
3.3.3. The Two Episodes Related
The extent to which 5.22-25 parallels the basic structural elements of
5.17-21 may now be observed in the following tabulation (Figure 9).
Figure 9: Parallels in Linear Plot Structure between 2 Sam. 5.17-21 and 5.22-25
That the second episode pragmatically depends upon the first is evident
from its parasitic brevity, which, in presupposing the fuller information
given in the opening of the first episode, condenses down the latter's
more circumstantial narration.
But the resulting sparer narrative of the second episode gives great
salience within it to Yahweh's speech. The significance of this emerges
from a comparison of vv. 23-25a with vv. 19-20. In 19-20:
(1) David speaks both before and after Yahweh, and says far more,
both in quantity and in substance;
(2) the little that Yahweh says in 19b, though crucial to the plot outcome, merely re-echoes in assent what was first said by David in
19a(3y;
(3) it is David's words in 20a3.4 that incorporate the interpretative
meat of this episode.
109
On the other hand, in 23-25 a:

(1) David's speech to Yahwehimplied both in his inquiring of
Yahweh 23aa and in Yahweh's response 23af3is completely
elided from the narrative;
(2) Yahweh's words, far from acquiescing in David's implied
request (23a|3), impose instead a divine agenda crucial to the plot
outcome (23b-24);
(3) it is Yahweh's words which incorporate the interpretative meat
of this episode;
(4) David's response to the divine instructionswith implicit assent
and narrated full complianceensues without his uttering a
word.
Thus the basic paralleling plot-wise of the two episodes is deliberately
exploited to give maximum rhetorical effect to the contrast between
David's effusive speech and Yahweh's laconically complaisant response in the first episode, and Yahweh's directive speech and David's
tacitly obedient response in the second
3.4. Poetics and Ideology in 5.17-25
Both our serial close reading of 5.17-25 and our conspectual examination of the narrative structure and technique in the two episodes have
laid bare just how central to each of the two is David's consultation of
Yahweh and response to his word. Plot-wise the action of each episode
turns on these two actions; structurally they are the focal point in each.
Yet, as opposed to this double consultation here, the story of David
elsewhere in Samuel notes David's consultation of Yahweh relatively
infrequently,52 given that story's length, and considering the many
threats that beset David and the momentous decisions he has to make in
52. Another narrative about David, 1 Sam. 23.6-12, substantively involves the
same procedure of consultation as the two episodes in 2 Sam. 5.17-25, though it
does not use the technical expression with the verb 'PNfil 2 Samuel 21.1a(3 uses of
David a different technical expression, miT "B DN >pD, 'seek the face of Yahweh', which normally refers to regular cultic acts performed at a shrine. David is
also four times reported as receiving oracles mediated by prophets: in two of these
instances (2 Sam. 7.4-17; 12.7-15 both Nathan) it is clear that the oracles were not
sought by David; in the other two instances (1 Sam. 22.5; 2 Sam. 24.11-14 both
Gad) solicitation may be, but is not necessarily, implicit.
110
its course. Thus the mere fact that, within this short pericope,53 David
twice consults Yahweh with signal success draws attention to itself, as
a matter of evident import. Clearly, on the surface it suggests a David
who is in close and harmonious relationship with Yahweh, a David to
whom Yahweh's power and will are benevolently disposed. Moreover,
since this evident benevolence results in removing the greatest threat to
his continuance in the melek-ship over Israel to which David has newly
acceded, the reader is easily led to assume further that Yahweh will
bend his power and will to sustain David in it.
Yet if this general perspective on the two episodes in 5.17-25 is in
danger of depicting Yahweh as tractable to David, and complaisant towards his ambitions, the significant difference of the second episode
from the first in structure and balance raises questions about the nature
of their relationship. Thus the god who in the first episode mildly
assents to the very general requests of David, allowing the latter to
determine in detail his own course of action, becomes the god who in
the second episode refuses to issue such a blank cheque, now precisely
dictating to David his course of action. The god who in the first episode
says little, a little that simply reiterates David's words, is the god whose
precise and decisive instructions in the second reduce David to a complete and subservient silence. If David defers to Yahweh in the first
episode by proclaiming the effective action to be Yahweh's, still the
words that mediate this to the reader are David's. Thus in the first
episode it is David's words that make the rhetorical impact, Yahweh's
are merely a low-key echo. How different the rhetoric of the second
episode, where Yahweh's speech and projected action dominate the
whole episode. Here it is David's silent obedience, narrated in conventional terms, which comes as the low-key, expected, response.
We shall see in following chapters how 5.17-25 has delineated a situation with enough thematic dynamic to carry the reader through to
7.29. The David who here has such an apparently cosy relationship
with Yahweh will all too soon find that to presume upon it provokes a
perplexing and vexing response (2 Sam. 6), and ultimately a humbling
one (2 Sam. 7). Here in this section we have a David who at this point
clearly has everything to gain, his life and his continuing occupation of
his throne, by deferentially seeking the help of Yahweh against his
enemies. But even so we catch a glimpse of a David, hinted at in the
53. The rather longer 1 Sam. 23.1-13 has David consult Yahweh three times in
the course of its narrative.
111
first episode (5.17-21), bent on manipulating a Yahweh whom he

assumes to be complaisant to the furtherance of his pretensions as
melek. The authoritative Yahweh of the second episode can submerge
this David, because he is content to be deferent with Yahweh while his
life and his throne are still under threat. But once that threat is removed
(2 Sam. 6), this ambitious David re-emerges to pursue his plan to control Yahweh as permanent guarantor of his melek-ship. In so doing,
however, he encounters a Yahweh (2 Sam. 7), who enforces his divine
prerogative far more robustly than in 5.22-25.
Chapter 4
DAVID DIFFERENT WITH YAHWEH: 2 SAMUEL 6
The chapter title indicates significant thematic change within this section of our text. In the previous chapter I showed how the short initial
section of our stretch of text, on the surface depicting a harmonious
relationship between David and Yahweh, also subtly conveyed suggestions of undercurrents within this relationship. In 2 Samuel 6 we will
find these undercurrents gradually surfacing, to become the governing
drift in the tide of events. Thus currents which caused the merest ripples on the calm surface of 5.17-25, set in to send waves breaking over
6.1-23.
What is not being said in the narrative is of as much significance as
what is, particularly in the earlier part of this unit. Out of the tide of
events, which does not run quite as David had planned, his covert
intentions break the surface, betraying the outline of his difference with
Yahweh. I have chosen the unusual English combination 'different
with', not merely to parallel the title of the previous chapter, but
because, far more clearly than the normal combinations 'different from,
to, than', it expresses the covertness of David's estrangement from
Yahweh. This estrangement is something which David never acknowledges, not even to himself. It subsists within a relationship to Yahweh
that publicly pays him all due court, but the reader is made privy to
aspects of David not visible in his public persona.
4.1.2. Narrative Connections: Plot, Scene, Time
Yet although, as I indicated in my first chapter, in plot as well as in
theme the narrative of 2 Samuel 6 carries on from 5.17-25, it does not
immediately and seamlessly link up with it. The reader has to keep
expectations in suspense at first, and wait upon the unfolding of the
4. David Different with Yahweh: 2 Samuel 6
113
narrative to imply connections. I pointed out in Chapter 1 that, as the

story of David is told in Samuel, without the victories of 5.17-25
David's overall politico-military situation, as still a nominal vassal of
the powerful Philistines, would not have allowed him to requisition the
ark from Kiriath Jearim/Baal Judah, where the Philistines had sequestered it. But, in addition to this effect of the broad improvement in his
circumstances, his victories turn out to have opened up precisely the
route1 the ark is to take from Baal Judah to Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 6.
Hence his transfer of the ark is a logical plot development out of the
situation brought about in 5.17-25.
The relation of the scenic locale in the beginning of 2 Samuel 6 to
that in 5.17-25 is not spelt out by the text, but the general coincidence
of the two is taken as information already known to the envisaged
reader. Baal Judah lay on the route between the valley of Rephaim and
Gezer, the route of David's rout of the Philistines (5.25), and Rephaim
lay on the route from Baal Judah to Jerusalem, the route of the ark's
journey in 2 Samuel 6. Thus, while not set out by 5.25/6.1-2 as a direct
continuation, given the right pragmatic presuppositions, the scenic
locale of 6.1-4 is in fact far more continuous with that of 5.17-25 than
can be expected from a disjunctive change in episode.
With regard to the temporal relationship of 6.1-10 to the preceding,
again the text says nothing directly. But the natural readerly expectation
from 5.25 that, following his victory, David would return to Jerusalem,
coupled with the fact that in 6.1-10 David makes the best part of the
same journey, lead to the textual implicature that the events of 6.1-10
form part of this anticipated return journey. We shall find in the close
reading below further considerations which strengthen this implicature.
An overview of 2 Samuel 6 quickly reveals that it falls into three clear
episodes, demarcating stages in the realization of David's plan to relocate the ark to his newly acquired capital, and to requisition to himself
and his household the blessing of the ark-god, Yahweh of Hosts. The
first episode 6.1-11 sees David's initial attempt baulked by Yahweh's
intervention, and a perplexed and angry David abandoning the ark in
1. So far as we can fix the locale defined in 5.20, 23-24, and the territory thus
liberated from Philistine control (5.25): see the discussion in Ch. 3 nn. 22, 23, 40
and Ch. 2 nn. 4 and 7.
114
limbo. The resumed journey in the second episode 6.12-20a, however,

results in the installation of the ark and David's departure homeward
with the tokens of blessing. But the consummation of his intention is
frustrated by the intervention of Michal in the third episode, 6.20-23.2
These three episodes will provide a natural and convenient means of
subdividing my close reading.
4.2.1. Verses 1-11
The opening sentence (6.1) is something of a puzzle, imposing on the
reader an unusual amount of processing effort3 in order to make it
cohere, either with what has preceded or with what follows. As to
linking back, its opening words 'Again David ... (verb complement
expected)' (111 "HI? ^CH) set something of a false trail, since at first
sight they resemble 'again the Philistines...' (DTKZfts Til? 130^1 5.22a),
the opening of the second episode of 5.17-25, and thus subliminally
suggest the start of a third episode in the same series. However, the
syntax-cum-semantics in 6.1 quickly belie the momentary resemblance,
by showing both the verb rjcn, '(David) gathered', and its construction
to be different from IDD1'! in 5.22.4 But this makes the function of the
second Hebrew word in 6.1 the more puzzling: 'David again (~n#)
gathered together all the elite troops...' To what does the temporal
adverb refer back? The most obvious implicature is to a previous occasion when David had assembled such troops. But 5.17-25 has neither
explicitly narrated nor implied David's gathering such a military force,5
2. It will be observed that I have included 6.20a in both the second and third
episodes. This is because I see it as integral to each, as will emerge from the ensuing discussion. In fact, it will be found that the precise delimitation of each of the
three episodes will vary somewhat in the course of discussion, as a consequence of
their integrated boundaries, and according to the needs of the particular discussion.
3. On this technical term of psycholinguistics see the Glossary.
4. Ô'l here evidently is to be read as a graphic syncopation of *](?&'], 'he gathered', anomalously vocalized on the pattern of TPIN, ^DN, etc., and not as a graphic
syncopation of ^D'TH, 'he added, increased', which offers no intelligible sense in the
context. Ô1! in 5.22 has an infinitive complement which is lacking in 6.1.
5. On the contrary, the only reference in 5.17-25 to the nature of David's
fighting force is the casual addition of VCMN1, 'and his men', to 5.21b. This locution
designates, not a general Israelite force, but, in accord with established reference in
Samuel, his personal band of loyal fighters who go back to his days of struggle: so
1 Sam. 22.1-2, 6; 23.3, 5, 13 etc.
115
nor has there been any previous reference to David's doing so in the
David story in Samuel.6
The answer to the puzzle may lie in the resonant conjunction of the
expressions 'picked Israelite troops' (6.1) and 'to search out David'
(5.17) further back in two episodes7 from David's flight from Saul. In
1 Sam. 24.3[2]; 26.2 Saul deployed three thousand8 picked troops9 from
the fight against the Philistines 'to search out David' (DN ttJpD'?
TTI) in the Judaean wilderness.10 Yet as things turned out on each occasion it was Saul's life that, put in jeopardy to David and his small personal band of fighters, was spared by David.11 Now in our present text
the Philistines twice send a force12 'to search out David' (~n~I DN ^pD^
5.17a(3, cf. 5.22a), but it was they who were routed, by David and his
personal band.13 Only following this defeat of the Philistines does
6. Within the politico-historical pragmatics in the story of David in Samuel
this is to be expected, since it is only since David's installation as king over Israel
(5.1-3) that he would have had the right to call up such a force.
7. Whether these are variant accounts of one basic tradition need not concern
us here, since in the story of David in Samuel they are narrated as separate incidents.
8. Of the other references to a force of picked Israelite troops, Judg. 20.34
gives a figure of 10,000, and 2 Sam. 10.9 = 1 Chron. 19.10 gives no figure.
9. The Hebrew expressions vary slightly in each text, ^"ifer bDQ "1TQ KTK
i Sam. 24.3, "ptnfer mm er 26.2.

10. The first incident follows immediately on from a campaign of Saul against
the Philistines (1 Sam. 23.27-24.3) for which he could be assumed to have called
out the Israelite militia. But in fact, 1 Sam. 23.8 has narrated that Saul had previously summoned the Israelite militia (DUn ^D DK, 'the whole army') in his pursuit
of David, so that the ensuing Philistine campaign is actually presented as a mere
sideline to his major preoccupation with David. Furthermore, the account of the
second incident (1 Sam. 26) strongly implies that the force was assembled especially to pursue David.
11. Initially numbered in the story at about 400 (1 Sam. 22.2), later there is
variation in the tradition between this figure (so LXXB 1 Sam. 23.13; 27.2; 30.9) and
a figure of 600 (MT 1 Sam. 23.13; 27.2; 30.9). The distinction made in 1 Sam. 25.13
(cf. 30.10) between 400 fighters and 200 baggage minders is probably one way of
rationalizing this variation. Pragmatically speaking, our David could have increased
the size of his personal army, once the narrative has him established in Hebron and
later in Jerusalem. But the text says nothing to foster such a presupposition.
12. The size of the Philistine force implied in 2 Sam. 5.17-18 and 5.22 can only
be guessed at, but given that according to the text David is already established in
Jerusalem, it would need to be sufficient to dislodge him.
13. This is the implicature of 'and his men', V2HK1 5.21.
116
'David gather again all the elite troops in Israel', ten times Saul's 3000
(6.1).14
Thus the puzzling ~nu, 'again', in 6.1 evidently has rather distant
textual anaphora, back to 1 Sam. 24.3[2] and 26.2, as being the first
subsequent gathering of picked troops noted in the narrative. But this
reference so far back in the story would by itself be too distant and
allusive to be effective. It is made effective, however, through the further connection strikingly forged by the phrase 'to search out David'
(in DK 2Jp3^), a phrase which also links our passage to the same two
earlier texts, and to nothing in between. This link creates narrative
irony. For David has emerged unscathed from the Philistines come 'to
seek his life', just as he had earlier from Saul. But more, with his small
personal band David has now won the victory over the Philistines that
Saul had failed to secure with Israel's elite troops. Why, then, here,
after the event, does David assemble 'all the elite troops in Israel'?
A similarly allusive narrative irony may help to explain, since the
connection of 6.1 with what follows in 6.2-5 is also not by any means
immediately clear to the reader. Again a false trail is too easily followed. For, on the one hand, explicating15 from its general content and
position in the narrative, that is, that, following his tactical victory over
the Philistines in 5.25, David musters a large force of Israel's fighting
elite, the reader may naturally be led to expect that David will mount a
more sustained campaign against the Philistines. But no such campaign
ensues in 2 Samuel 6 (or 7), and it is not until 8.1 that there is reference
to further Davidic victory against the Philistines.16 Yet, on the other
hand, having been specially told at this point that he gathered this force,
it is not spelt out to the reader how David makes any use of it in the
very different events which unfold in 2 Samuel 6. First, there is no
other explicit reference to this force in the chapter. Nor, second, does
14. Neither 1 Sam. 24.3 nor 26.2 carries a clear implicature that the 3000 comprised all of the available elite troops at that time. Our present text, however,
specifies this of the 30,000.
15. The appropriate elements of pragmatic discourse logic in particular are the
principles of optimal relevance and of minimum processing effort: i.e. that here it is
most natural to assume that, when reference to another military force is introduced
into a context which has been concerned with military fighting, the new military
force will play a role in a continuing context of military fighting. On optimal relevance and minimum processing effort see Blakemore (1992: 30-37).
16. The brief summary reference in 8.1 does not indicate the nature of the force
used to secure victory.
111
any semantic, close contextual, and/or pragmatic logic of reference

make it perspicuous that 'and all the people17 who were with him' ('PDl
intf "ICJK Q^n 2aa) either consists of or even necessarily includes the
30,000 picked fighters of 6.1.
However, what the reader in fact finds in 6.2-5 is a celebratory
progress of the ark, a cultic object David removes from Baal Judah and
takes with him in religious procession. This progress is a victory parade
of the divine warrior-king, Yahweh of Hosts, as we shall see in detail
below. Evidently David calls up 'all the elite troops in Israel' to participate in the parade to make it impressive and worthy of the occasion, by
reinforcing its pan-Israelite character. But it is an irony that he must
especially summon to the ceremonial procession those he had no need
to call upon in order to win the victory being celebrated.
The theme of celebration begins to emerge in 6.2. David's leading
role in the proceedings is implicit in the singular verbs in 6.2a, which
subtly emphasize the distinction in the compound subject between
'David' and 'all the people who were with him'.18 But that an accompanying group is specially mentioned suggests nonetheless that this
group comprised more than mere underlings. Moreover, the different
style of designation from the immediately preceding 'all the picked
troops of Israel' (6.1) leads the reader to assume that 'all the people
who were with him' is a group not simply identical with the former.19
But what unfolds about the nature of the ceremony nevertheless shows
17. Although Di>n here is potentially ambiguous, since the term often refers to a
specifically military group, 'the army, troops', there is nothing in 6.2-5 to sustain
this particular semantic reference against the term's more common general meaning. On the other hand, this more general reference is in fact contextualized for our
text by ^tOfcr IT3 *?D, 'all the house of Israel' 6aa, 15aa.
18. Note that, on the other hand, third person plurals are used in vv. 3-4, where
the pronominal anaphora is most naturally referred to 'David and all the people
with him' 2a. The verbs, however, could conceivably be read as indefinite third
plurals, recounting the actions of unnamed cultic attendants, of whom there may
have been more than the Uzza and Ahio subsequently named in 3b. This latter reading is, however, simply a different nuance of reading, since pragmatically on either
reading it would be assumed that the actual handling of the ark was performed by
duly accredited attendants, but at the direction of David and those with him.
19. If identity had been intended, the expected form of 6.2ace would have been
either mirr toa "D*?'! lQp'1, 'then they arose and left Baal Judah', or ~[^1 Dp"1!
rmrr ^ma ^tnto-a Him ^Dl 111, 'then David and all the picked troops of Israel
arose and left Baal Judah'.
118
that 'all the picked troops of Israel' were highly appropriate participants
in it, if not the only appropriate participants.
Hence the designation 'all the people who were with him' (2aa)
implicates the participation of others besides the elite troops. Who else
is comprehended is however left to general contextual and pragmatic
considerations to determine. From the preceding text the reader will
readily suppose that David's 'men' (5.21b) will also have been involved, given that this ceremony follows immediately on their victories
over the Philistines. Then on general pragmatic grounds it is easy to
assume that such a ceremony will have given a prominent role to representatives of Israelite tribes, such as officiated earlier at his anointing as
king (5.3). This readerly assumption is later confirmed by the expression 'David and the whole house of Israel' (^fcnfer m ^Dl TIT) 5aa).
Both pragmatic and wider contextual knowledge are presupposed for
the explication of 2af3ba. It is evident enough from what is said here
that the ark of God has been at Baal Judah. What is not directly evident
from the text, however, is why David should, immediately following
his victory over the Philistines,20 gather a company at this place for the
purpose of the ark's removal. But if the reader knows that the ark was
at Baal Judah precisely because that is where the Philistines allowed it
to remain, knowledge available from the early chapters of Samuel,21
then David's removal of it from there immediately after his resounding
double victory over the Philistines takes on a triumphal aspect.
Indeed, the participation in the ceremony of the 30,000 picked troops
of Israel will then have served to parade the magnitude of his triumph
with an ironic precision. For according to the narrative in 1 Sam. 4.1011, 30,000 was the number of Israelite foot soldiers killed when the
Philistines captured the ark. Then further, if the reader knows that Baal
Judah/Kiriath Jearim was in the line of David's rout of the Philistines
20. That historically grounded objections may be made to the order of events
here is for us beside the point, since the present narrative order, whether in fact historical or not, had to be plausible to its envisaged readers, who no doubt had a considerable knowledge from tradition about the narrative's events, participants and
locale.
21. The envisaged readers for 2 Sam. 6 need not have been solely dependent on
the account in 1 Sam. 6.21-7.2 for this knowledge, since it might have been available in other forms of tradition. But however that may be, the passage in Samuel,
besides being the only source of such knowledge available to the modern reader, is
an operative intratextual context, as subsequent discussion will show.
119
as given in 2 Sam. 5.25b,22 and that their being driven to the outskirts
of Gezer thus clears them well away from this town, both elements of
pragmatic knowledge bound up with the scenic locale of 2ap.bct, then,
following his victory, David's project is seen to be an eminently practical possibility, and that for the first time since the ark arrived at Kiriath
Jearim.23
But the reader's perception of the nature of the triumph to be celebrated is given a new dimension by the defining clause added to the
designation 'the ark of God' (OTlS^n ]!"!). In the ark cult at Baal
Judah/Kiriath Jearim (cf. 'there', D2J, 2bp)24 the God of the ark was
worshipped under the title 'Yahweh of Hosts25 enthroned on the cherubim' (D'aiDn 3GT mtUS mrr 2b(3).26 The title YHWHSeba'ot invokes
Yahweh as divine king,27 but more particularly, as the contexts of its
usage indicate, Yahweh as the divine warrior-king enthroned over the
ark in the shrine, whence he may be summoned to assert his regal
authority over his enemies by bringing his people victory.28
22. This claim stands whichever of the alternative readings for MT D33Q is
adopted (though it should be observed that the much-favoured reading pinÔ,
'from Gibeon', does set up a line rather to the north of Kiriath Jearim). In this respect 5.25b prepares for 6.2-5.
23. The references to Philistine occupation and oppression of Israel that occur
between 1 Sam. 7 and 2 Sam. 6 are at any rate susceptible to this interpretation, if
they do not demand it.
24. For the textual reading see above Ch. 2 n. 15, p. 55.
25. On the construing of the combination niiOU HIIT as a construct relationship,
see Zobel (1987-89: cols. 879-80), Mettinger (1982a: 127-28); and for the interpretation of mias, see Zobel (cols. 880-81), Mettinger (1982a: 123-27), and the literature cited there.
26. This cultic title of Yahweh was not however original to Kiriath Jearim, but
evidently came there with the ark, since the title is used in 1 Sam. 4.4 in connection
with the ark at Shiloh: 30" m3S miT rVQ ]TI HN Um IN&n rfrti DWH ifTBh
D'TTDn, 'the people sent to Shiloh to take up from there the ark of the covenant of
Yahweh of Hosts enthroned on the cherubim'. Compare also the separate occur-
rence,in a psalm with northern provenance (cf.ephraim,benjamin and manasseh

80.3[2]), of the two constituent expressions niKD^ DTI^N mrr, 'Yahweh God (of)
Hosts' (80.5, 20[4, 19] cf. m3S DTftN 8[7], 15[14]) and D'STOn 3KT, 'enthroned
on the cherubim' (Ps. 80.2[1]): probably a poetic break-up of a stereotyped liturgical phrase.
27. For the association of the title mfcQ^ mrr, 'Yahweh of Hosts', with the ark
and its royal connotations, see in general Zobel (1987-89); Mettinger (1982a; passim, 1982b: 19-28); Seow (1989: 11-15).
28. In 1 Sam. 4.3-4 the ark of 'Yahweh of Hosts enthroned on the cherubim' is
120
Now our text has already made quite a point of emphasizing how
David's victories over the Philistines are Yahweh's victories (5.17-25).
Hence in taking the ark in ritual procession from Baal Judah to Jerusalem, David is parading the cultic emblem of the victorious divine
warrior-king through exactly the scenes of his latest triumphs.29 Moreover, these triumphs are over the Philistines, whose capture of the ark
as a trophy of victory, as a result of earlier victories over Israel, had led
to its eventual deposit precisely in Kiriath Jearim/Baal Judah. Thus this
procession is also a ritual repossession30 of his territory, now freed from
Philistine control, by the returning divine warrior-king.31
brought into battle following a defeat at the hands of the Philistines. Psalm 80
invokes God under the same title, appealing for a saving epiphany (80.2-3, 8, 20[12, 7, 19]) in a situation of probable military distress (80.13-16[12-15]). In Ps. 99 the
continuing rule of the king Yahweh 'enthroned on the cherubim' (99.1) is
accompanied by the kind of fear among the nations (DÔU 1MT) and perturbation in
the natural order which elsewhere accompanies the progress of the divine warriorking: cf. Exod. 15.11-18; Ps. 48.3-9[2-8]; Judg. 5.4-5; Ps. 18.8-20[7-19]. Psalm 18
displays, in close order, elements of this ideology which occur in a more dispersed
way in our narrative text: Yahweh hears the psalmist's plea I^DTIQ, 'from his
temple', and rides to the psalmist's rescue on a cherub U)~D b# DDT1 (18.11[10]),
manifesting himself in the phenomena of a rainstorm (18.12-16[11-15]). So here
victories achieved through rainstorm theophanies (5.20,24) are now being celebrated by Yahweh of Hosts as the god enthroned on the cherubim.
29. The journey from Kiriath Jearim will have taken the procession down from
the hills overlooking the valley of Rephaim on to the plain and across it towards
Jerusalem. I am convinced that had we as precise a knowledge of the locales indicated in 5.17-25 as is presupposed by the text, that Baal Perazim and the heights of
Bakaim (? and Geba/Gibea) would turn out to be on this route. The route implied in
Ps. 84 as taken by pilgrims to the sanctuary of the divine king Yahweh of Hosts
(84.2-8[l-7]) is no doubt the same journey, at least in part: cf. the vale of Baka
(84.7[6]) with Bakaim (2 Sam. 5.23-24), and the reference to the autumn rains
(84.7[6]) with the rainstorm imagery (5.20, 24).
30. Compare the ritual claim of the warrior-god to (re)possession of territory in
Ps. 60.7-10[5-8] = 108.7-10[6-9].
31. Thus I would maintain that while McCarter (1983: 274-75) rightly notes
points where the analogy Miller and Roberts (1977: 10-17, esp. 16-17) draw
between 2 Sam. 6 and Mesopotamian accounts of 'the return of an image to its
sanctuary' fails, he wrongly excludes from 2 Sam. 6 any notion of divine return, in
favour of his own analogy with the inauguration of a god in a newly founded
national shrine. Revealingly, McCarter says 'Throughout 2 Samuel 6 the destination of the ark is referred to as "the city of David" (vv 10,12,16)...' (1983: 274;
my emphasis). As his own citations betray, however, the text makes no explicit
121
In fact, two clear points of connection with that earlier narrative of

the progress of the ark emerge from the following verse: 'they mounted
the ark of God on a new ox-cart when they took it up from the house of
Abinadab in Gibeah' (TOfen n0"in rfol? *7N DYl'PKn ]TIK PIN "QDT1
niOIQ inrDN IT3Q 6.3a). The new ox-cart recalls the provision made
by the Philistines to allow the ark to return to Israelite territory (1 Sam.
6.7), and the house of Abinadab in Gibeah (or 'on the hill') was where
the ark was deposited at the end of that narrative (1 Sam. 7.1). This
narrative in 1 Samuel 5-6 recounted how, following 'the very great
slaughter' (IRQ n^Ti: HDQH 'nm 4.10) of Israelites, 'the hand of
Yahweh' (5.6, 7, 9, cf. 11; 6.3, 5, 9) inflicted on the Philistines 'a very
great disaster' (IKO rftn: n&inft 5.9, cf. 11), forcing them to allow the
ark's return. Thus the journey from Eqron on the new cart was the
beginning of a triumphant progress for Yahweh God of the ark, a
progress in which the lords of the Philistines reluctantly played the role
of the defeated (6.12). But this progress came to an end at the borders
of nominal Israelite territory, the new cart was destroyed (6.14) in premature celebration (6.19-20), and the ark languished32 in obscurity at
Kiriath Jearim (6.21-7.2) until Yahweh's decisive defeat of the
mention of a destination until 6.10, and prior to this the only implicit reference to
one is 'to me' in the immediately preceding verse (**?$ 6.9). Yet, on McCarter's
view of the text, so belated a mention of the ark's goal is hardly to be expected. In
fact, the ark's destination could have been mentioned as early as 6.2b, e.g. 'to bring
up from there to the city of David ("111 TD [^]) the ark of God...' Or again
mention could easily have been introduced after 3a thus: 'they took it up from the
house of Abinadab in Gibeah to take it up to the city of David' ("VU [^N] irftun'?
TTI). Thus it is the very suppression of any mention of a destination until 6.10 that
is significant, in a way McCarter has not perceived, for the ideological thrust of the
text. As we shall see, the entry of the ark into Jerusalem and the inauguration of
David's new shrine at the end of the ark procession are not the climax of David's
action. Meanwhile, the procession with the ark manifests the triumphal return of
Yahweh to repossess his territory from Philistine domination.
32. The narrative that ensues (1 Sam. 7.3-14), an account of a decisive victory
over the Philistines (7.13-14) inspired by Samuel and accomplished by a stormtheophany of Yahweh (7.9-10), in effacing the earlier Israelite defeat of 1 Sam. 4
(cf. 7.12 with 4.4), foreshadows David's decisive double victory, similarly won.
Note also the closely similar form of introduction of each battle sequence: see
Figure 5 above, p. 90. Yet remarkably, Samuel, who grew up as a dedicated cultic
attendant in the ark-shrine at Shiloh according to 1 Sam. 1.24-28; 2.11, 18-20; 3.121, apparently completely ignored the ark, on the occasion of the above victory,
and also throughout the rest of his life.
122
Philistines through David (2 Sam. 5.17-25) could allow the victory

march to resume in yet more triumphant vein.
The verb 'they took up' ("int^n 3a|3), used of the ark here though not
in that earlier ark narrative, reinforces the sense of victory celebration,
through a link with the nearer context. In 5.21b, David and his men
'took up' (DNtiH), that is, captured, as trophies of war the divine images
abandoned by the Philistines. Now David and the people with him 'take
up' the ark as another trophy of victory. Its parade however, is not as
booty captured by David, but as booty liberated by him from Philistine
control. Yet the reader may note that the ark, whose freedom from
Philistine control is here being publicly celebrated, thereby passes
under the control of its liberator.
Any readerly tendency to explicate the third plural pronominal
anaphora of the two verbs in 3a as directly involving David and the
people with him in handling the ark is corrected by 3b-4. Some textual
corruption here in MT notwithstanding,33 twice within a short compass
special cultic attendants for the ark are mentioned. First, they are
named and identified as the sons of Abinadab (3ba),34 in whose house
at Baal Judah the ark had been installed, thereby authenticating their
appropriate cultic status.35 Then, both are carefully located in relation to
the ark as it proceeds on its journey (4a3b): Uzza walking alongside,36
Ahio in front. By being named first in each case, Uzza is rhetorically
33. For the textual evidence, see above Ch. 2 n. 20, p. 56.
34. Neither is mentioned in the earlier ark narrative, where an Eleazar son of
Abinadab is installed as attendant for the ark in Kiriath Jearim (1 Sam. 7.1). The
identity of Eleazar and Uzza is quite possible (cf., e.g., Azariah and Uzziah as
alternative names for the same king of Judah), but remains conjectural. We lack a
sufficient basis to judge whether this kind of name variation would have been perspicuous to the envisaged reader. In any case, it matters little or nothing for the
understanding of this narrative, where the relevant pragmatic assumptions about the
status of the two are clearly implicated in the immediate context.
35. Clearly, 6.2 delineates Baal Judah as a shrine to Yahweh of Hosts, to whom
was dedicated there a cult centred on the ark (T^.-.OD trip] "I2JK, 'over which was
invoked there...). Thus 6.3-4 implicates that Uzza and Ahio were duly consecrated
attendants of the ark, and appropriate superintendents of its journey. These implicatures must be given due weight in connection with what ensues in vv. 6-7.
36. For discussion of the reading, with relevant pragmatic and poetic considerations, see Ch. 2 n. 21, pp. 56-57. Note further that on a later occasion in Samuel
when the ark makes a journey, it was again accompanied by two priestly attendants,
Abiathar and Zadok (2 Sam. 15.24-29).
123
foregrounded, in preparation for his further appearance in the action in

vv. 6-7.
But nor are David and his retinue merely relegated to the fringes of
the ceremonial procession: 'David and all the house of Israel play and
dance before Yahweh' (5aa) on all kinds of wooden instruments, blown
and struck (5a[3b). Here again the combination of some textual uncertainty and our lack of pragmatic knowledge of such ceremonies leaves
the modern reader more hazy about what is going on than the envisaged
reader need have been. However, it is a reasonable conjecture that there
was a more or less established ritual for a ceremonial procession of the
ark, and from our text (cf. also vv. 14-15 below) it would appear tc
have involved music and dancing,37 the instrumental music evidently
limited to non-metallic38 instruments. The plural participle Dpn&Q
makes 'all the house of Israel' fully participant in the enthusiastic celebrations, but the compound subject phrase with 1111 first nonetheless
emphasizes David's leading role. The cultic nature of the celebrations
is highlighted by the addition or IliT "OS1?, 'before Yahweh',39 the first,
37. As well as involving dancing and the playing of instruments (6.5, 15: for the
latter activity cf. Jer. 31.4), the activity in a celebratory context referred to by pnto
may also include singing, as is evident from 1 Sam. 18.7, and cf. also the inclusion
of the 'festal shout' (nullD 6.15b). The activity was clearly enthusiastic and uninhibited, particularly where strong drink was involved, as Exod. 32.6; Jer. 31.4-5
implicate. A Yahwistic cultic setting is either explicit in (Exod. 32.5-6), or closely
linked with (Jer. 31.6), these latter-cited texts.
38. Whereas (on my text) v. 5 refers to wooden instruments only, v. 15 below
includes the shofar, made from the horn of domestic animals. But is that already an
adaptation to the practices of its new home? To attempt to explain the exclusion of
metal instruments is beyond the scope of the meagre information we possess, but it
may be significant that in the Deuteronomic tradition the ark is a simple wooden
box (Deut. 10.1-3), without the gold overlay given it in the priestly tradition (Exod.
25.10-13, etc). Further, the vehicle on which it is transported in Samuel is evidently
a simple wooden ox-cart (1 Sam. 6.14). Admittedly, in 1 Sam. 6 the vehicle was
made by the Philistines, but under instruction from 'the priests and diviners' (D'OHD
D^QDpl 1 Sam. 6.2), and the similarity with the new ox-cart in 2 Sam. 6 strongly
suggests that this was the ritually appropriate mode of transport. It is not unlikely
that in the more urbanized liturgical and ideological environment of the Jerusalem
temple, the simplicities of this older rural ritual were replaced by a more costly and
elaborate royal ritual, in which gold and other metals played a lavish role.
39. The expression doubtless belongs to the semantic field of 'having an audience with a great person', where the physical contiguity of client and patron is an
essential element in the personal transaction, but the relative status of each is at the
same time maintained: the client 'appears before' the patron. Thus in the Hebrew
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rather low-key,40 use of a phrase destined to become thematic in this

chapter.41 What David and Israel are doing here is thus represented as
done in Yahweh's presence, with the implicatures of its being done by
his leave, in his interests and for his pleasure. The phrase next recurs in
v. 14 below, where the now priestly-garbed David strums enthusiastically 'before Yahweh'.
All proceeds as expected, until the procession reaches the threshingfloor of Nakon (6a). The text assumes knowledge of the locale in question, not available to us.42 The point of its mention clearly lies in its
spatial-cum-temporal location of what occurred at this stage in the
journey. At this very spot (note the repeated HD, 'there', 7apba), near to
Jerusalem, shortly before the anticipated end of the journey, the triumphal progress was brought to an abrupt and inauspicious end, by an
unlooked-for eventuality. Uzza, walking beside the ark, stretched out
and grasped hold of it (6ba),43 because the oxen made the ark totter on
the cart (6bp). Now the envisaged reader must surely have been
intended to assume that, as a duly consecrated cultic attendant, walking
Bible the phrase mrr 'B^ is used very frequently of ritual and liturgical acts, very
often but not exclusively performed at a recognized shrine, to express (1) the orientation of the actions as performed in the interests of Yahweh; (2) the associated
sense of an actual audience with Yahweh thereby created; (3) the relative status of
Yahweh and of the worshipper as the powerful and the dependent respectively.
40. No particular rhetorical stress falls on the phrase in 6.5, apart from a certain
resonance with ]T"1N 'lEb, 'before/in front of the ark' in 4b.
41. It recurs with increasing rhetorical prominence in 6.14a, 17b, 2la, 21b.
42. This is the only mention of the locale in the Hebrew Bible. It is widely supposed that it lay on the outskirts of Jerusalem. While this is possible, there is no
clear indication to this effect in our text. One piece of evidence, however, pertinent
to its locale is the explicature derivable from Isa. 17.5 that the valley-plain of
Rephaim was a corn-growing area. A threshing-floor is thus quite likely to have
been located on a rocky eminence within, or close to, the valley's confines.
43. The Hebrew 5 TITK implies taking a good grasp on something, not merely
making contact with it, for which II Ml is the appropriate expression: cf. Exod.
19.12-13; Lev. 5.2-3, etc. Moreover, use of the wayyiqtol 13 TnWT in our text
specifies this as an accomplished act. However, ]1"l^n DK NIK1? IT HN NTi? rf^Kh,
'Uzza stretched out his hand to take hold of the ark' (1 Chron. 13.9ba), implies that
Yahweh intervened before Uzza. actually touched the ark. This is why 1 Chron.
13.10ap, consistently, cites only Uzza's stretching out his hand as the grounds of
Yahweh's action. But to import this explanation, as many do, into 2 Sam. 6.7ap,
where Uzza has actually grasped hold of the ark, is to make our text quite inconsequential, citing Uzza's unimportant mediate action rather than his operative final
action as the reason for Yahweh's intervention.
125
beside the ark as it trundled on an unsprung cart pulled by oxen along

rough roads,44 it was Uzza's express duty to prevent the ark from falling
off or otherwise coming to harm. Why else was he walking beside it
(4ap)? Thus, contrary to the standard modern view of this incident,45
the envisaged reader would not see anything untoward in Uzza's action.
Accordingly, when 6.7 relates that Yahweh became angry with Uzza
and struck him down there46 so that Uzza died there beside the ark, this
ought to take the reader by surprise, since nothing in the narrative so far
has suggested that death would follow the handling of the ark,47 let
alone its handling by a duly authorized attendant. Far from it! The ark
was handled at the start of its journey ("DDTI.. .intftzn 3ap), patently by
Uzza and Ahio (3b), and that with undeniable impunity. Furthermore,
as a result of the present incident David will have it deposited (lilCD1'!
lOb: actual handlers unspecified) in the house of Obed Edom, also with
impunity. Finally, at the journey's eventual end the reader will see the
ark installed 022T'1..<)KDI'1 17aa), again with impunity, and that by
anonymous attendants (13a), whose cultic fitness to handle the ark is
44. These are all elements of pragmatic knowledge about states of affairs in the
world readily available to the envisaged reader, and subliminally activated by what
is said in 6.2-4,6a.
45. This view, based as it is on notions about the violation of holiness, is
influenced strongly by the account in 1 Sam. 6.19-20 of Yahweh's slaughter of
Beth Shimshites, and probably also to some degree by the Chronicler's version of
our present narrative. In 1 Sam. 6, unlike the Levites who, as sacred personnel, had
unloaded the ark from the cart with impunity (6.15), the ordinary Beth Shimshites,
distinguished in 6.15 from the Levites, were slaughtered for having 'looked into'
the ark (mrP |TI3 ItO T) 6.19a MT). Moreover, their words 'who can stand before
Yahweh this holy God' (nin tinpn OM^n mrP "3D^ 1Q^^ jDV 'Q 6.20) indirectly acknowledge their violation of Yahweh's holiness. In 1 Chron. 15.12-15 (cf.
15.2) the Uzza incident is blamed on failure to use duly sacrally authorized ($h> "O
Q32JQD irro~n 15.13), i.e. Levitical, personnel to handle the ark, and thus implicates a holiness violation as the cause of Uzza's death. But our text in no way
impugns the sacral standing of Uzza, nor can his properly attentive action be
viewed as remotely comparable to the profane curiosity of the Beth Shimshites.
46. On the text see above, Ch. 2 n. 28, pp. 59-60. Note especially the close
verbal parallel between D'n^Kn DKJITO'I 7ap, and in D& DD'l 5.20a. The significance of this becomes clear with 6.8 below.
47. The reader derives this motivation for the divine action as a cause-effect
implicature from the discourse consecution 6ba-7, on the principle of optimum relevance. The reading of 1 Chron 13.10ap,]Tln *?S IT lf?2J TO *?!), 'because he
stretched out his hand against the ark', restored here by many, spells out the discourse implicature with its own particular slant: cf. n. 45 above, and Ch. 2 n. 28.
126
thus nowhere made as evident as that of Uzza. Thus on all identifiable

textual and pragmatic presuppositions so far, Yahweh's homicidal
anger against Uzza is inexplicable, and I therefore conclude that the
envisaged reader was meant to find it so.48 That being the case, readers
would expect the rest of the text to enlighten their perplexity.
Certainly, this turn of events is both unexpected and perplexing to the
text's David, who is overcome with impotent rage.49 There is irony in
the similarity between the expression describing David's response to
the situation (...^ 111^ ~im 8a) and that used of Yahweh (*]$ im
riT^D miT 7aa). The latter expression characterizes the anger of the
powerful, directed coercively at the less powerful.50 The former is more
often used of the frustrated anger of the powerless, who, fuming at a
situation they cannot themselves change, dare not unleash their anger
on its real target.51 If David thought he had control of the ark, he is now
48. Thus the almost universal explanation, namely that Uzza's touching would
be seen as a violation of the holiness of the ark such as to incur death (cf. n. 45
above), is clearly excluded by the textual and pragmatic presuppositions of our text.
No doubt some may feel that this reading of the text only exacerbates the moral
problem. But that is something I need not discuss here, since it is clear that our text
is concerned, not with any moral issue raised by Uzza's death, but with how David
reacts to it.
49. There is a resonance, or rather dissonance, between David's reaction and
that of the Beth Shimshites in a similar situation. According to 1 Sam. 6.19 the
people are thrown into mourning (ibs^m) over the great slaughter wrought among
them by Yahweh after they had shown undue curiosity in the ark (]l~i^3 IN")). This
mourning is not so much for the dead as for the fact of the slaughter (HDn "D
...mrP), and by implication for the transgression which caused it. David, far from
being plunged into mourning over the striking down of Uzza, or being concerned at
its cause, is instead mightily peeved at the baulking of his project!
50. As far as I can see, this is consistently so in the Hebrew Bible: mostly of
Yahweh, but also of others in a position of power, e.g. Potiphar as Joseph's master
(D^nN Gen. 39.19); Joseph as master of his brothers Gen. 44.18; Eliab as David's
eldest brother 1 Sam. 17.28; ironically, David as royal judge, in anger unwittingly
pronouncing sentence against himself 2 Sam. 12.5-6; contrast 13.21b in the next
note. Hence X ^N mn typically specifies (with 3) the target of X's anger, whereas
'p mn typically does not specify a target.
51. Compare Cain Gen. 4.5; Jacob Gen. 31.36, who here remonstrated pTI)
with Laban; Moses Num. 16.15; Samuel 1 Sam. 15.11; Jonah Jon. 4.9, etc. There
are, however, some instances of "p mn being used of the powerful: cf., e.g., 1 Sam.
18.8; 20.7 (Saul); Ps. 18.8[7] = 2 Sam. 22.8 (Yahweh). Accordingly, 2 Sam. 13.21b
TKQ "b "in"'! may well play on this ambiguity to depict ironically the self-inflicted
impotence of David's anger over Amnon's rape of Tamar: his judicial power of
127
rudely disillusioned. As the ark procession drew ever closer to its asyet-unspecified destination, Yahweh suddenly made that destination
more distant to attain than it was at the start of the journey.
Three elements in 6.7-8 together make unmistakeable, and hence
significant, reference back to 5.20. The first is 'God struck him down
there' (DTftNn Dtf TO'I 6.7a(3), which closely parallels 'David struck
them down there (I'll DCd D^l 5.20a2). Taken by themselves these
phrases might be no more than coincidental instances of a common
Hebrew idiom. But add to this parallel, second, the similarity between
the ensuing explanatory clause 'because Yahweh had made a surge
against Uzzah' (mm pa mm pa l^K ^),52 and David's ejaculation
'Yahweh has surged over my enemies before me like a surge of
(storm)-water' (D^Q f ^SD ^ STK n mrr pa 5.20a3.4.b). The coincidence of expression here cannot be dismissed as conventional cliche.
Finally, each incident is memorialized in names David gives to the
respective places of their occurrence, both incorporating the Hebrew
root pa (mi? pa; 'surge against Uzza' 6.8b // DÎS în; 'lord of
flood-surges' 5.20b).
Thus a very evocative parallel is drawn between the activity of Yahweh in the two incidents. However different their contexts appear to be,
the text is implying that the role of Yahweh has an essential similarity
in each. Nor ought the irony of the parallel subsisting in David's reactions to Yahweh's action in each be missed. In 5.20 David responded
with appropriate awe to Yahweh's miraculous power against his enemies. Here53 he responds with anger mingled with fear and perplexity at
action, so impetuously pronouncing sentence in 12.5-6 above (see previous note), is
here thwarted by his private inclination towards his eldest, as the LXX reading
spells out.
52. Our apprehension of the rhetorical force of 8a|3 is increased by the reflection
that the most natural discourse-cohesive way of expressing the motive clause would
have been in the terms provided by 7a, e.g. niiO PDQ TT ron "Ittftf *7S, 'because
Yahweh had struck Uzza down with a fatal blow'. Note that this is precisely how it
is done in 1 Sam. 6.19bp rftna HDQ Din TIT ron "D, 'Yahweh struck down
(many) among the people with a great slaughter', picking up on 19a.
53. The explanation in 6.8ap is actually given in the implied narrator's voice,
but the implicature that it was how David himself saw it gains strength from 8b,
which probably states, or at least implies, that it was David who gave the spot its
then still current name, Peres Uzzah. The syntax of 8b is anacoluthic, the result of
compression: (1) it is most natural to assume pronominal anaphora of Kip"1! 8b to
ITb 8aa, i.e. 'he (David) named'; (2) but this coheres oddly with run QVTI IS,
128
the same overwhelming divine force, which now strikes down one
doing his own behest. But is then David's minion an enemy of Yahweh? Is David's behest so contrary to Yahweh's will as to provoke
such drastic intervention? Such are the questions raised about this later
incident by the arresting manner in which 6.7-8 parallels it with 5.20.
The seeming unpredictability of Yahweh's dealings with him, now
bringing to success a clearly hazardous enterprise, now throwing into
jeopardy an apparently safe one, engenders in David an attitude of fear
towards Yahweh (9a) new to the story of David.54 Moreover, the
strangeness of the experience throws David into aporia: baulked of his
original intention, David is at a loss what to do (9b-10a).55 Yet the very
moment of its frustration is also the first time the narrative has ever
specified the goal towards which David was taking the ark: ^K 'to me',
'until this day', 8b|3, which really requires an impersonal construction 'one called it
= it is called'. Probably the construction changes in the course of the utterance,
leading to strict inconsistency. McCarter's rather dismissive comment on 6.8 (1984:
170) completely misses the connection with 5.20, and offers instead a complicated
double explanation for 8ap, involving an actual breach, both in the family of Uzza
and in the fortifications of Jerusalem. I have shown in the previous chapter on 5.20
how this misperceives the image involved in ]HS (see 3.2.2 above with nn. 22, 23,
pp. 94-95). But in any case, whatever may have been the facts about a putative
historical figure Uzza, and about the walls of Jerusalem in the time of a historical
David, neither is nearly so germane to readerly understanding of our text as its
poetics, which deliberately constructs a parallel between David's perception of
Yahweh's dispatch of Uzza in 6.8, and his perception of Yahweh's dispatch of the
Philistines according to 5.20.
54. Indeed, apart from the rather different instance of Jonathan's reassurance to
David NTH ^ (1 Sam. 23.17aa), this is the only other occasion in the whole story
of David where the verb NT is applied to David. Even the dangerous rebellion of
his son Absalom, from whom David flees for his life, is not said to induce fear in
David.
55. Again the general similarity with the situation of the Beth Shimshites in
1 Sam. 6 make the differences here instructive. The Beth Shimshites are equally at
a loss what to do with the ark following the disaster. But since they accept Yahweh's baleful intervention as evidence that they are not fit custodians of the ark,
their questions properly reflect on the due disposition of the ark for the service of
'this holy God Yahweh' (6.20), and issue in the summons to the inhabitants of
Kiriath Jearim (6.21). David's reflections, however, turn exclusively around the
frustration of his own intentions (2 Sam. 6.9b, lOa), hardly a positive basis on
which to conclude that the ark would properly be deposited in the house of Obed
Edom.
129
9b, TT! TU *?!?...T^R, 'to him...to the city of David', 10a.56 But the
implied reader is informed of this now only through being made privy
by the implied author to David's interior monologue.57 How this
betrays his sudden disenchantment with the plan to requisition the ark
for himself (V^N TOrf?)!
In fact, these reactions by David to the Uzza incident, some publicly
observable, others only assertable from authorial omniscience, are a
particularly revealing moment in the plot. For, at the outset having
failed to declare openly his intention to requisition for himself the ark,
let alone to consult Yahweh about it,58 David is now caught out concealing within himself his change of heart. The one whose first recourse
in 5.17-25 was to consult Yahweh (mrPD 111 ^Ktfn 19aa, 23aa), is
now remarkably reluctant, even when brought up sharp by Yahweh, in
any way to confide in him!
David's deposit of the ark in the house of Obed Edom the Gittite
(lOb) has thus been given a purely negative motivation: David fears to
take it to himself into the city of David, so he leaves it with Obed Edom
for want of any better recourse. Evidently59 the house was conveniently
near to the threshing-floor of Nakon where the disaster occurred, yet far
enough removed from the city of David for safety! Of any positive
grounds for choosing this household the narrative does not inform us.
However, the identification of Obed Edom as a man of Gath may implicate his being a long-standing client of Davidpresumably having
become such while David was in the service of Achish of Gath (1 Sam.
27-2 Sam. 1)who stayed with David during his rise to power in
56. Reflecting pragmatically, one would have to assume that David informed
the leaders of the procession that he was taking the ark in triumphant progress to
the city of David, without necessarily adding that he intended to lodge it there permanently! However, this reflection is irrelevant to the rhetorical impact made on the
reader by the narrative's suppressing this information until this point.
57. As often in Hebrew, the speech introduced by "iDtt^ 9b, and implied by K^l
!"QN lOa, is not specially marked as interior, but both the nature of the rhetorical
question in 9b and the lack of any obvious addressee strongly suggest this.
58. Given the emphasis on David's consultation of Yahweh in the preceding
narrative (5.19aa, 23aa), the absence of such consultation over a matter that
involves Yahweh so directly must be significant.
59. The text appears to take Obed Edom and his house as well known. Apart
from our text and the direct parallels in Chronicles, a "person or persons named
Obed Edom is/are mentioned in several other Chronicles passages, on which see
next note.
130
Israel. But nothing is said to indicate that either his person60 or his
house was appropriately sacred61 to receive the ark, thus implying that
under threat David was happy to seize the available expedient to disembarrass himself of his dangerous cargo.
How long he would have left it to languish there is not apparent. For
when the ark had remained (32T1) three months62 at the house of Obed
Edom (lla), 'Yahweh63 blessed Obed Edom and all his household'
60. According to Chronicles Obed Edom was a Levite, variously identified as a
gatekeeper of the ark shrine (1 Chron. 15.18, 24; 16.38), musician (15.21) and
Levitical ark ministrant (16.5, 38), and progenitor of a family of gatekeepers (26.48, 15). Apparently, 1 Chron. 26.5b D'rftK "Oia "D, 'for God blessed him', cf.
13.14b (= 2 Sam. 6.lib), identifies the progenitor, and presumably by implication
the gatekeeper of 1 Chron. 15 and 16, with the Obed Edom in whose house the ark
was deposited, whereas 1 Chron. 16.38 MT can be construed as distinguishing Obed
Edom son of Jeduthun the gatekeeper from Obed Edom (lineage unspecified) the
ark ministrant. However, it is perfectly apparent from all this that the Chronicles
tradition accords to Obed Edom a cultic status appropriate to custodianship of the
ark, a status it denies to the ill-fated Uzza. But this representation of Obed Edom
comports neither with his name, 'he serves [the god] Edom', indicating non-Yahwist religious adherence by his parents, nor with his origins in the Philistine city of
Gath. In our text Uzza is a duly authorized attendant to the ark, Obed Edom a pressganged superintendant whose credentials are suspect.
61. Thus in this respect also David's response is unlike that of the Beth
Shimshites, who sent a considerable distance to Kiriath Jearim, to find an appropriate locale to house the ark (1 Sam. 6.21, 7.1).
62. Why three months? Since we do not know in what way Yahweh blessed the
household, we cannot directly explain the time span as that required to manifest the
blessing. But is there perhaps an intended echo of the ark's sojourn in the Philistine
cities of Ashdod and Gath? The narrative in 1 Sam. 5 does not specify a time span
for either of these sojourns, but 6.1 cites seven months as the total for its time in
Philistine hands, including its clearly much shorter stay at Eqron. An easy calculation reckons three months each in Ashdod and Gath, and one month in Eqron. The
three months each it accordingly took for 'the hand of the Lord' to manifest itself in
curse upon Ashdod and Gath, is balanced by the three months taken for the blessing
of Yahweh to manifest itself on the house of Obed Edom. Moreover, this suggested
correspondence imparts an irony to the identification of Obed Edom as a man of
Gath (lla)!
63. It is Yahweh tout court, not Yahweh of Hosts, the special title of the God of
the ark according to 6.2. In Samuel this title seems mainly to be confined to liturgical or solemn contexts (cf. 1 Sam. 1.3, 11; 4.4; 17.45; 2 Sam. 6.18; 7.26, 27), and,
twice only, to the messenger formula introducing an oracle (1 Sam. 15.2; 2 Sam.
7.8). Similarly, in the narrative about the ark in 1 Sam. 5-6, Yahweh tout court is
the standing divine designation.
131
(lib). What form the blessing took64 is not regarded as relevant information. The simple fact of the blessing, however, asserted here as a fact
on the implied author's authority, is highly relevant.
4.2.2. Verses 12-20a
The blessing of Obed Edom is highly relevant because it is a fact that,
when he gets to hear of it, David can turn to his advantage. Having preconfirmed for the reader what is now reported to David in 12a, the
author can use the report to spotlight by its repetition this eventuality as
the turning-point in the plot.65 Moreover, the repetition is itself rhetorically heightened. First, the scope of the blessing is made more comprehensive with the expansive addition 'and everything belonging to him'
0^ "1CJK ^D n^l 12aa). Then a further additional phrase 'on account of
the ark' (DTT^H "["HR "TOin 12a[3) now gives explicit expression to
what was previously a post hoc ergo propter hoc implicature in the
consecution of lib to 11 a. Finally, the most telling words in the brief
report, 'Yahweh has blessed' (miT ~[~n) and 'on account of the ark'
(DTI^n pltf ~nnun), are kept separated, and placed in the positions of
maximum rhetorical effect, at the beginning and at the end of the utterance respectively.66
64. Evidently 1 Chron 26.5 saw the eight sons there attributed to Obed Edom as
the result of this blessing: but such a blessing was hardly evident after three
months! Without referring to that text, Caquot and de Robert (1994: 416) cite the
insistence on the word fPH in ll-12a as grounds for suspecting that the blessing
consisted in a fecundity bestowed by the ark. One might further think of the narrative of the barren Hannah granted the blessing of a child following fervent prayer to
Yahweh of Hosts (1 Sam. 1.11), elsewhere (1 Sam. 4.4) identified as God of the
ark. But three months into a human pregnancy is rather too early for it to be evident
to all the world (cf. 12a), and in any case, one child is a notable blessing only where
barrenness has preceded, as in Hannah's case. Our text gives no grounds to presuppose such a situation here. The additional 'and everything belonging to him'
0*7 "I2JN ^D flNl 12a) broadens the scope of the blessing beyond the human members of Obed Edom's household to include livestock (cf. Gen. 12.20 with 16; Num.
16.30-33, etc.) and/or crops (2 Kgs 8.6; Ruth 4.9). In the absence of any direct
indication about time of year, however, this hardly helps.
65. The rhetorical function of the repetition is made the more apparent if we
observe that the text, following the pattern of 5.17b, could simply have read I?Qh
'ill! DTftRn p n *?m "j'ri Til "[bob in/Yôn, 'David the king heard about it/
It was reported to David the king; so he went and took up the ark of God, etc.'
66. Admittedly, the expression m!T ~["Q occurs in the normal position in the
utterance, but in fact, as inspection of the following tabulation will demonstrate,
132
These, then, are the words which resound in the mind of David as
melek67 as he resolves to appropriate the blessing to his own household
(12ay).68 This further piece of internal monologue answers to that
reported in 9b and implied in lOa: doubt and aporia are now displaced
by confident resolve. But it is a resolve not even declared to Yahweh,
let alone taken in consultation with him. Thus this second authorial disclosure of David's inner thoughts is no less revealing of David's concealed intentions than was the earlier disclosure. Readerly suspicion of
a scheming self-interest that David dare not acknowledge becomes ever
more distinct. Would it have been evident to the envisaged reader that
the turn of events as narrated actually justified David's response? On
the contrary, on normal Israelite religious premises the blessing of
Obed Edom's household 'on account of the ark' was a sign, not that
Yahweh was now happy for David to remove the ark from there to
possible alternative word orders would put either mrr "p3 or DTT^Kn ]1~!K "IDIG
into weak position, as well as thereby giving salience to elements not so significant
in the text:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(1) is the least rhetorically effective version of all, since it deprives ]"")
DTfrNn of salience without conferring much rhetorical weight on any other part of
the utterance. (2) and (3) give most salience to DTl^Kn ]!") TOJn, but at the
expense of miT ~p3, which occurs in weak position in each version. (4) and (5)
give most salience to the recipient of the blessing, not the real point of the
utterance, retain salience for mm ]T1K TQjn, but again put mm "["13 into the
weakest part of the utterance.
67. 12aa is the first time in our stretch of text that "]^Qn has been used as a title
for David, and the first time the word has been used at all since 5.17. Thus it is
pointedly in his persona as melek that David responds to the news of the blessing
brought by the ark to the household of Obed Edom.
68. According to text preserved in the Lucianic Septuagint, on which see Ch. 2
n. 35, p. 61. Both the structural correspondence to the earlier piece of interior
monologue, and the thematic importance that the blessing of David's house
assumes in our text (cf. especially 6.20-21, 7.29) are persuasive arguments in
favour of retaining this piece of text. But even without it, David's action in response to the report (12b) taken together with 18b, 20a implicates the same
intention.
133
David's city, but rather that he approved of its present lodgement.

David's removal of the ark cannot but be seen as the highhanded and
self-serving act of one whose aim, now none too covert, is to strengthen
his melek-ship.
David's visible response to the report is immediately (as it would
appear) and joyfully to remove the ark from Obed Edom's house to the
city of David (12b). Accordingly, 12b reverses the situation effected by
lOb. The change in David from his earlier state of mind ('David
became angry', m^ "IITI 8aa, and 'David became afraid of Yahweh',
mrp nK "HI K~n 9a) is emphasized by the rhetorically stressed placing
of 'with joy' (nriQED) at the end of 12b. But clearly at this juncture, if
David had earlier experienced any scruples over his self-interested
machinations, they are decisively set aside.
The interrupted progress of the ark thus resumes. This time, however,
David proceeds with greater circumspectness, seeking to avert a repetition of the Uzza debacle with the offering of sacrifice (13b) as the ark
moves off once again (13a).69 Unlike vv. 3-4 above, the ark attendants
here are sheltered behind the deprecating anonymity of the designation
'bearers of the ark of Yahweh' (miT |11 'Kto] 13a). Indeed, it is now
David who assumes the role of cultic leader, clad in the linen kilt of the
dedicated ark priest (14b),70 and strumming vigorously 'in the presence
of Yahweh' (miT ^b 14a). David continues in priestly mode throughout the episode, culminating in his offering sacrifice and dispensing
blessing on the people (17-19).
So far the narrative of the resumed journey has concentrated virtually
all attention on David as instigator of and leader of the procession, but,
just as in David's original procession from Baal Judah, so here in its
resumption the enthusiastic participation of all Israel is vital to David's
intentions. Accordingly, v. 15, paralleling v. 5, conjoins 'all the house
69. The syntax rQH...VIJ>}$ ."O TH indicates one ritual performed at the beginning of the resumed journey, not a repeated action.
70. Outside this text and its // in 1 Chron. 15.27, ~Q "IlStf occurs only of Samuel
at Shiloh in 1 Sam. 2.18, using the same expression (2.18b "13 TEN "nan ID]) as
here, and of the priestly family of Ahimelech at Nob 1 Sam. 22.18, where the
expression is 13 -JISK Kfffl (cf. without 13, 1 Sam. 2.28 of the Elides, 14.3 of the
Elide Ahijah). 1 Sam. 2.18, 28 taken with 3.1-2 make clear the ark connection, and
14.3, 22.17-18 the priestly significance of the garb. The fact that, in the one other
text which links the ark and the wearer of the linen ephod (1 Sam. 3), the wearer at
first fails to recognize the voice of God, imparts intratextual irony to our present
text.
134
of Israel' with David in the festive bringing up of the ark, and describes
in terms of an action in progress ('bringing up..with cultic acclamation
and sound of the horn', ~1D1$ 'Tip! rfi?l"lfQ...D''Î7Q) what was summarized punctiliarly in 12b ('he brought up... with joy', nnftfcD...i7ir>i).
Thus in 14a, 14b and 15, with their subject-verb inversion and
participles, and their descriptive detail, the narrative's plot movement is
perceptibly becalmed, in order to give the reader a vivid impression of
the scene.
The tableau is held for a moment longer in 16abai.2, to focus on a
new aspect of the scene (16ba3.4p). Just as the ark enters the city of
David, the very moment when David's project is being crowned with
success, 'Michal the daughter of Saul', looking out of the window, sees
'the king David' with the ark. This element in the narrative, although
new, is not in itself surprising. On the contrary, it is a version of a stock
scene to conclude battle accounts, which depicts the women waiting at
home, in joyful and expectant welcome, for the return of their victorious warriors, laden with booty.71 From its outset, our narrative has set
up the ark procession as David's triumphal progress (6.1-2) to celebrate
his victory over the Philistines (5.17-25), and within this perspective
the ark, liberated from Philistine control, is a spoil of battle. Thus that
David's chief wife72 should play her expected73 part in proceedings
71. The actual biblical examples all modify the basic stock scene in various
ways. The version we have here is that of (an) aristocratic woman/women looking
out of a palace window. Judges 5.28-30 makes of this a taunt, a sardonic portrayal
of growing doubts mingling with anticipations of fine booty in the minds of the
aristocratic Canaanite women waiting for their men's return, but all in vain as the
hearer/reader already knows. 2 Kings 9.30-31 turns the same basic scene into a
proud act of defiance, as Jezebel confronts her treacherous enemy Jehu as though
welcoming him home as an auspicious victor bringing her booty. A humbler version of the stock scene, in which ordinary women kept busy at home by their daily
tasks share the spoils with the victors, is reflected in Ps. 68.13-14[12-13], and probably also lies behind a similarly worded taunt on Reuben in Judg. 5.16. To my mind
this stock scene is more demonstrably the implied background to the text here than
the hypothetical sacred marriage ritual proposed by Porter (1954: 164-67).
72. Though never explicitly stated, Michal's status as chief wife is a clear
implicature of the following points in the story of David: (1) she is David's first
wife, and the daughter of his predecessor; (2) David made her return to him a
condition of his negotiations with Abner over transfer of the allegiance of the
northern tribes to David (2 Sam. 3.12-16); (3) she is a wife who can castigate her
husband for unbecoming behaviour (6.20); (4) her barrenness (6.23) is of moment.
73. For a highly perceptive, yet in significant respects rather different, reading
135
ought only to add to the auspiciousness of the occasion.

The reader's unease about her part, however, is first engendered by
the stiff formality in how Michal and David are related here, quickened
by what Michal saw, and finally confirmed by how she reacted to what
she saw. First, then, identified by her patronymic 'daughter of Saul',
rather than by her marital status 'wife of David', or by both designations together,74 Michal is projected as distanced from David. The reader's still inchoate sense of a cold formality in relations grows firmer at
her seeing in him 'the king David', not 'David her husband', or even
simply 'David' tout court. Moreover, the CN-PN word order as against
its reverse makes David's status, not his mere identity, the salient feature in Michal's present perception.75 Then further, Michal sees 'the
king David' not simply 'strumming away' (~O"DQ) as the reader has
already been told (14a), but first and foremost 'flinging himself about'
before Yahweh (mrr ^S1? "p-DDI TTSD TH "JÔn HK fcOHl 16ba).76
The reader recollects that David is dressed in the priestly kilt (14b), a
garb which, as the envisaged reader can be expected to know, provides
of the poetics and ideology of the role of Michal in this text see Exum (1991: 18496; 1992: 85-91). On my reading, although 'isolation' soon emerges as an important feature in the delineation of Michal in this text, that delineation begins here
with no more isolation than is to be expected from her conventional role.
74. The use of the patronymic in referring to the wives of Israelite kings appears
to have been normal, hardly surprising given the status of the families from which
they were usually drawn, and its use no doubt facilitated distinction between the
different wives of the same king. But in these contexts the woman's status as wife
of the king is either explicit in the context or a strong implicature. Thus in our present context, where she is reintroduced into the narrative in person in connection
with David, the lack of reference to Michal as David's wife (contrast 2 Sam. 3.14)
is a significant silence. For a discussion of the use of patronymics in the Hebrew
Bible see Clines (1972).
75. The PN-CN order "[^QH 111, 'David the king', is far more frequent in this
and analogous combinations. In this case the CN is an unstressed element in a
petrified formula, a conventional acknowledgment of the PN's right to title, = our
'King David'. In the reverse form 11"! ~]^QH, 'the king, David', however, both
terms have greater rhetorical force, since the CN predicates its office of the PN,
rather than merely attributing it to him incidentally.
76. It should be noted that both "1D1DQ and ttDQ are intensive forms, to convey
whose force in a different language requires some form of periphrasis. Moreover, I
have used the different occasions I have referred to the latter verb in my discussion
to give a variety of renderings, in order to suggest something of its possible range
of meaning.
136
scanty covering for the male torso. Hence in 16ba, poetics powerfully
combine with pragmatics to point up the reaction of Saul's regal
daughter to all the colour and movement of King David's dramatic
entry into Jerusalem: 'she despised him in her heart' (rn^D 1^ nm
16bp). The rhythmic shortness of the phrase, in marked contrast to the
longer clauses preceding it, and its intense assonance77 give it the
pointedness of a dagger, a rhetorical thrust enhanced by its being kept
to the end of this long sentence. Michal has gone chillingly out of
character from the woman awaiting with joyful anticipation the victor's
triumphant return home!
Thus the reader has been momentarily translated from down below
with David, to up there with Michal, to see the action from her vantage
point. But to be made here to see from her vantage point is not yet to
take her point of view. Nonetheless, through the eyes of Michal the
brief scene cleverly fosters the reader's inchoate estrangement from
David's point of view, that estrangement which has already been
engendered by earlier being made privy to his secret thoughts (9-10,
12). The reader will later listen in on an exchange between the queen
and king (20-22), where Michal's words serve to throw David's
motives further into doubt.
Those down below, however, are too far away and too caught up in
the action to catch the steely glint of cold disdain in Michal's gaze. The
ark is brought into the city (17acci), with nothing inauspicious evident
to the celebrants, and duly installed by its bearers78 in the shrine prepared79 for it by David (ITac^Py): 1QPQ2, 'in its place'80 carries the
77. In modern pronunciation there is assonance between 1, 3 and T in Qm, and
of the ^s and 2s in 113^3 V?. How differently this may have sounded in ancient pronunciation is impossible for us to say, though one assumes that there must still have
been considerable assonance, given the repetition of the same consonants.
78. The referents of the plural verbs IND'I and l^'l are presumably the same as
those for mrr ]T1N "WH in 13a, i.e. the ark-bearers who remain entirely anonymous
in this second episode.
79. The reflective reader is tempted to ponder on when David made this preparation. Syntactically, it is possible to read HO] in 17ay as a preterite 'which David
pitched for it (at that time)'. But the discourse logic implied by the placing of the
preceding phrase 17a(3 'in its place in the midst of the tent' makes the pluperfect,
'which David had (already) pitched for it', the more natural way to construe 17ap\
In that case, the most easily made assumption is that David had got the tent and
socle ready when he first planned to bring the ark to Jerusalem. But when was this?
The narrative consecution of 6.Iff. to 5.25 strongly suggests that the events nar-
137
suggestion that the ark finds its true home there. Its new home is inaugurated81 by David's82 offering sacrifice 'before Yahweh' (17b),83 thus
effectively identifying Yahweh's presence in David's shrine with the
rated in 6.1-10 were an immediate sequel to David's victory over the Philistines,
even to the point of implying that David had not returned to Jerusalem in the
meantime, but collected the ark on his return from the outskirts of Gezer. That
being the case, David's preparations would have to have antedated the Philistine
attacks narrated in 5.17-25. But since the story of David says nothing explicit about
this issue, we are drawing out what is no more than a weak contextual implicature
of 6.17a. In other words, our narrator is content to hint at David's longer-standing
plans here, without insisting on the point. The question is resolved in the Chronicles account, where David's preparation (1 Chron. 15.1b) is placed after the victories over the Philistines, and before the removal of the ark from the house of Obed
Edom.
80. As against, say, in "b ^Dri 1EN DlpQH, 'in the place which David had prepared for it', which the text might easily have read (cf. 1 Chron. IS.lba). DIpD,
'place', here probably refers to some kind of pedestal or socle on which the ark was
installed. But this is a pragmatic reference for DlpQ defined by this particular context, and not an inherent semantic meaning of the term: cf. the points I make
against claims that DlpQ in 2 Sam. 7.10 means 'shrine, temple' in Murray (1990,
esp. 299-302).
81. The whole context here is directly focused on David's new tent-shrine for
the ark and its inauguration, and only indirectly and by implication with the city of
David. Note that in fact 6.17 does not mention the city of David, though it very
easily could have read 'they brought the ark into the city of David and set it, etc.'
('131 ucn m TI> mrr ]1"i n IKm). Thus, although the bringing of the ark by
our David into his city is undoubtedly implicated by our narrative as being highly
significant for Jerusalem, in making his analogy with Mesopotamian texts concerning the inauguration of new royal cities, McCarter (1983: 274-77) is seduced into
rather misrepresenting the focus of our text, in the interests of his alleged parallels.
The questions of what a historical David may have done and why, should not be
either confused or conflated with those of what the David of our text did and why.
One cannot project directly from answers to the latter set of questions to answers to
the former set.
82. This could be understood as 'David had sacrifices offered', with the text
implicating that there were priests on hand to carry out the ritual slaughter of the
large number of animals, especially for the D^Q1?^ offering evidently presupposed
by 6.19. But as we have already seen above (6.14) and will see again in 6.18-19,
David is in any case presented as a priestly celebrant presiding over the whole
ritual.
83. mrr lysb, 'before Yahweh', with n^ll) rh>V is surprisingly rare: elsewhere I
have noted only Judg. 20.26b; 2 Chron. 1.6; and probably Jer. 33.18b by implicature from "ysbto in 33.18a.
138
ark installed there at David's behest. The inauguration rites include not
only the '<3/d-offerings exclusive to the divine sphere, but also the
$eldmim-offenngs shared in by the worshippers, here given emphasis by
detaching D'D^tfl from m^D and delaying it until the end of the
sentence.
David's liberal sharing out84 of these offerings as tokens of blessing
among 'all the people, the entire mass of Israel, man and woman alike'
(19a)85 draws the general populace into David's actions, putting them
in a frame of mind to be well-disposed towards his cultic innovation.
More, his bestowal of bounty gives the people a tangible foretaste of
the blessing from the newly installed God of the ark, YHWH Seba'ot,
already solemnly pronounced on the people by David as chief celebrant
84. The verb p^n is used of the sharing out of offerings only once elsewhere,
and that in the more restricted context of sharing out the tithes among the Levites,
Neh. 13.13. Note also that the noun p^n of a 'share' in offerings occurs only in reference to priests, Lev. 6.10[17], and Levites, Deut. 18.8. On the other hand, both
the verb (Josh. 22.8; 1 Sam. 30.24 qal; Exod. 15.9, Judg. 5.30; Isa. 9.2[3], etc. piel)
and the noun (Gen. 14.24 bis; Num. 31.36; 1 Sam. 30.24 bis) often refer to the
sharing out of the spoils of battle. Given the present context of David's triumphal
return from battle with the ark as recaptured spoil, one may be justified in detecting
some resonance of David's sharing out 'spoil' in his sharing out the offerings made
in the cult of the recaptured ark. This resonance is prolonged by the potentially
ambiguous reference of the immediately following expressions D#n and ]1QH
t
?N'~)2r: see next note. Given further the text's sardonic twist to the role of the
woman awaiting the victor's return with spoil (v. 16), that David has shared this
'spoil' with 'all the people...man and woman alike' but is baulked precisely by his
queen Michal from doing so with his own household (v. 20), deepens the irony.
85. Both its repetitions and its use of the very uncommon expression ]1DH ^r>
^Klttr, 'the entire mass of Israel' (it occurs elsewhere only in 2 Kgs 7.13), make
this utterance striking. Following on from the verb p^lT (see previous note), there
is deliberate play on the ambiguity of reference of Din ^ and '?$')&'' jlOPI ^D,
whereby both could refer to the fighting forces of Israel, or to the people generally.
The former reference has been contextualized as potential, in general by the story's
action as celebration of Yah wen's/David's triumph over the Philistines and, in
particular, by the opening reference to the involvement of ^"lETD "IIPD ^D (6.1).
However, the latter reference, more immediately potential in the cultic context, is
actualized with the addition of the final phrase TON "1^1 KTNQ'?, 'man and woman
alike', obviously inapplicable to an ancient army. But further, there is irony in the
emphasis ntON, 'woman', derives as the culminating term in this series. For whereas
every (ordinary) woman in Israel receives from David a foretaste of the blessing to
be expected from the God of the ark, his wife and queen, Michal, spurns this
blessing and receives instead a curse (6.23).
139
(18b). This token sends the people home (20b) satisfied in the anticipation of abundance to come.86 Michal meanwhile has been lost to view
amid the general rejoicing. But prominent87 among the sharers in the
blessing dispensed by David in the name of the God of the ark are the
ordinary women (19aa3). Not only does their eager participation in the
ceremony contrast with Michal's aloof disdain (16b), but their sharing
in the blessing proves to be an ironic counterpoint to the curse
(barrenness, 23) which eventuates to the one who aborts the blessing
David is bringing to his own house (20).
Yet the dispersal homewards88 of the crowd does not mark the end of
the ceremony for David, for whom personally the most important ritual
act remains to be performed: 'David returned to bless his household'
GIT3 HN -}~\> TH niZh 20a). We can presume that David, still in the
role of ark-priest, brings with him, to bestow upon his own household,
portions of the $elamim-offenngs as sacred tokens of the blessing of the
God of the ark. Whether or not one has read the Lucianic plus (12ay), it
is still very evident here that securing and controlling for the benefit of
himself and his house the blessing of the divine warrior-king YHWH
Seba'dt (cf. 18b) is the major objective in our David's installing the ark
in the city of David.
4.2.3. Verses 20-23
However, as he approaches the palace (20a), David is met by 'Michal
the daughter of Saul' (20b). Already on her first appearance in our
stretch of text (16b above) this form of designation mirrored an ominous distance between David and his chief wife. Now it will be further
insisted upon in this third episode (20ba, 23a), where Michal daughter
of Saul is swept up into the fate that has overtaken her father's house.
In 20ba the designation imports into the otherwise innocuoussounding utterance, Til ntTIp1? ÎKttJ m 'PD'D RSm, 'Michal daughter
of Saul came out to meet David', an ominous resonance from 16b. Here
86. In Ps. 132.15 Yahweh as God of the ark installed in Zion solemnly promises
to bless his chosen abode with a food-supply sufficient to satisfy the needs of the
poor.
87. The inclusion itself of the specification ntiR TJJ1 W$ti7, the shape it takes
with informative stress on i"l2JN ~!!J1, and the placing of this as the last of the set of
appositional phrases, all contribute to foregrounding H2JN in this utterance.
88. For the motif of dismissal/dispersal homewards as an episode or narrative
close-out in the Hebrew Bible, as in 'then all the people went home' (DJJil *?D "j'n
imfr er 19b), see n. 103 below.
140
again, just as when introducing Michal above (16b) through the stock
scene of the aristocratic woman/women-at-home waiting at the window
for the triumphant return with plunder of their warrior-hero(es), our
narrator deforms another conventional victory scene, that of the
woman/women eagerly coming out to welcome the booty-laden warrior-hero(es) home.89 Michal comes out to David, not with the glad
welcome of music and dancingthat she has already despised from
afar (16b)! No, Michal pronounces a 'blessing' (13D"Qm 20bp)90 on
David with a salutation that begins by beguiling the king with precisely
what he might expect to hear in his moment of triumph from a welcoming woman at home:91 'how he has got himself honour today, the king
of Israel who...!' (...-)0K ^fcOZT "pn Dm "ODD HID 20bp). But suddenly she veers off into the most vituperative scorn: 'has made a lewd
exposure of himself to the watching serving-girls of his lackeys, just
89. Unlike the examples cited for the earlier stock scene (see n. 71 above), the
biblical examples of this one are more numerous, and more readily display its conventional features. Thus in 1 Sam. 18.6-7, 'women from all the cities of Israel'
'came out to meet Saul the king' ("pOR 'TlNtB rOp'?...n3tim) with music and
dancing, singing a couplet in praise of the triumphs of Saul and David. Compare
further Miriam and the Israelite women who 'came out following her' ("?D ]N^m
mnN D'tODH) with music and dancing, singing a stichos in praise of the triumph of
the warrior-god Yahweh, Exod. 15.20-21; and Deborah, who in Judg. 5.12 is summoned to sing an analogous song (cf. 5.11). Deborah is not here explicitly associated with other women, but the context is still one of general public celebration.
An instance of a family member greeting the returning hero with similar ceremony
but evidently more privately is Jephthah's daughter who, as her father approaches
the house, 'comes out to meet him with timbrel and dancing' OntOp1? HNIT
m^nom D^sro), Judg. 11.34. In its context, however, this is a meeting ironically
fraught with woe for both parties. Finally, two scenes in a military context, laden
with ironic import, are further examples, but lacking as they do most of the stock
scene's conventional features, are to be understood as sophisticated deformations of
it: Jael in Judg. 4.18 'came out to meet' (PRIp1? *7ir 2tfTl) Sisera, and later Barak
(4.22). But the reader already knows Sisera is not a conquering hero (4.17a), and
will soon come to perceive that the real victor is Jael, not Barak (4.22). On this see
Murray (1979: 183), which exposition, however, is now in need of refinement in
the light of my present perception that the narrator is working a deeply ironic twist
on the stock scene of the woman welcoming home the triumphant hero.
90. For the textual reading see Ch. 2 n. 46, p. 65.
91. Note also how Joel's initiating address of welcome to Sisera (Judg. 4.18a2)
beguiles the warrior into a false perception of what she has in store for him. The
woman who comes out to meet a man with words of greeting on her lips is not
always what the self-absorbed warrior assumes!
141
like one of the dancing-men!' (m^PD Vintf mnOR 'TSh DVH n*7M
D'lp-in in m^ 20b|}y). To the proud 'daughter of Saul', David's
moment of supreme exaltation is one of deepest humiliation, the
parvenu 'king of Israel' behaving with no more sensibility to what
becomes his position than the lowest-born menial. Michal vents her
cold fury against David by bitter parody of his expectations. The rift
between wife and husband is now the unbridgeable gulf of antipathetic
feeling92 that sets family against family, royal house against royal
house.
The berdkd-gift David sought to bring to his household as the victor's
spoils is thus, contrary to convention, swept away by the berakd-gteeting uttered by his waiting wife and queen. The implicated repudiation
of her parvenu husband in favour of her own royal lineage completely
alienates her from his household and its future blessing (cf. 23). Hence
David's intended blessing on his household now gives place to a blessing on Yahwehthat damns her along with her royal house!93 This
utterance is gravid with a triple irony.
First, this form of blessing is normally an ejaculation, expressing its
utterer's wonder, joy and thanksgiving at an unexpected good, often
received through an encounter with another person.94 Indeed, on this
convention Michal should have been the one to have uttered the blessing on Yahweh as response to the good news of the ark's installation
and its blessing brought by David. But, as we have seen, quite the
opposite results from David's encounter with Michal! This encounter
contrasts starkly with an earlier encounter of David with a woman,
Abigail, subsequently to become his wife, whose timely and unexpected intervention with David moves the latter to exclaim (and to
mean it!), 'blessed be Yahweh God of Israel who sent you this day to
meet me' cnfcnp*? nin nvn -[rftiS "ittfR 'ptoto'1 T^K mrr -p-n, 1 Sam.
92. This sets off ironic resonance with another text in the Hebrew Bible, the
encounter of Leah and Jacob. In Gen. 30.16 the unfavoured and neglected Leah
'goes out to meet' (inKHp'p fltib RXni) Jacob, and greets her husband with an invitation to share her bed, a privilege she has had to buy from the favoured Rachel.
Jacob complies, to the extent that Leah bears him two more children. But the
estranged Michal could in no way lower herself to give such an invitation to the
despised David, and suffers the curse of barrenness.
93. Here following the text preserved in the LXX: on this see above Ch. 2 n. 50,
p. 66.
94. For examples of this see Gen. 24.27; Exod. 18.10; 1 Sam. 25.39; 2 Sam.
18.28; 1 Kgs 1.48; 5.21 [7]; 10.9; Ruth 4.14; Ezra 7.27.
142
25.32). The utterly different tone and import of David's response to

Michal here are a measure of the mental and emotional gulf that divides
the two encounters. The tactful Abigail of 1 Sam. 25, whose prophetic
reminder to David of his destiny reveals acute insight into Yahweh' s
will, is here invoked by David's echo of her words (cf. 2 Sam. 6.21a(3
with 1 Sam. 25.30b) as an ominous presence to haunt the haughty
Michal of 2 Samuel 6, whose invective against David's actions reveals
only her purblind disdain for Yahweh's will.
Yet, second, the irony in David's retort that resonates from these
words of Michal's rival Abigail, is as nothing to the irony that resonates
from words, first spoken to her father by Samuel at the outset of Saul's
career, but now usurped to himself by David: 'has not Yahweh anointed
you as leader over his people, over Israel?' (o\)%i Ke%piKev oe K/upvoq
ei<; ccpxovTd em TOV A.QOV ccu-rov, em laponX; 1 Sam. 10.1 LXX). For
she is concerned, to the point of obsession, with what goes with the
status of melek. David's words are a devastating reminder that Yahweh
was always, right from her father's inauguration, as singlemindedly
concerned with the role of nagid.95 This is the role for which Yahweh
chose David above her father and all his house. This exultant assertion,
hurled at Michal in the heat of their fateful altercation, will itself be
thrown back at David by Yahweh, in the midst of another robust
encounter provoked by David's quest to control the ark (7.8b).
The third ironic resonance in David's blessing on Yahweh is much
more immediate, and far less exalted in character. His blessing brilliantly parodies Michal's own bitter parody of a blessing-greeting, by
closely paralleling its syntax of an initially innocent-seeming exclamation, turned sardonic by a crushing adjectival clause (see Figure 10,
p. 143). Thus in five simple words (in the Hebrew) David sweeps away
the basis of Michal's arrogant pretensions. Parvenu he may be, but he is
Yahweh's parvenu, chosen to displace the family of 'Saul's daughter'.
But David has set his blessing on Yahweh between the chiastically
balanced limbs of an inclusio: 'before Yahweh I shall keep on dancing
... and I shall keep making music before Yahweh' (.. .~lp~!K mrr ''B'?
miT 'OB1? 'npn&l 21aa,b), which makes 'before Yahweh' (miT ^sb)
the most salient element in his retort. In such pompous terms David
repudiates Michal's right to have any view on his behaviour. For her
regal disdain of his actions amounts to disdain of Yahweh to whom
95. The thematicity of this contrast and its ideology will be discussed in detail
below in Chs. 6-8.
20
How he has got himself honour today, the king of Israel who made a lewd exposure of himself...
21
Blessed be Yahweh who
chose me above your father and above all his house...

Figure 10: Parallel Structure of 2 Sam. 6.20b|iy and 6.21a<x3.5
144
alone, he proclaims, they are directed. Hence her scorn for David as
king is in fact a defiant scorn for Yahweh who gave him his position.
Then in v. 22 David scathingly dismisses Michal with a savagely
clever parody of the scornful terms of her greeting. His chiastic placing
of the contrasted pairs 'I will court low esteem' (Tfrp]!) and 'let me
gain honour' (n*nDR) at the extremes of the utterance, and 'in my own
eyes' (Tin) and 'but with the serving-girls' (mnOtfn DB1)) at its centre
creates a forceful rhetoric. An expansive paraphrase may suggest
something of its mordancy: 'if you feel my behaviour has brought
deepest humiliation to "the king of Israel", then let me assure you that
your "dancing-man" of a king will go on courting such low esteem, to
the point of being despicable in his own low-born eyes. No matter, so
long as among your "serving-girls" I gain myself honour!' With a cruelly sardonic twist to her own words the esteem of haughty, aristocratic
Michal is set beneath that of the lowly serving-girls with whom she
thought to humiliate David! Crushingly our David has bested Michal,
capping the ineffable put-down of his high-stated claim to a divine calling which elevated him above Saul and his family (21) with the blistering scorn of this masterful parody.
Yet there is a disturbing dissonance in the rhetoric of David's retort
in 21-22, trumpeted by the chiastic terms in each. In 21 David proclaims himself as Yahweh's nagid, whose actions from start to finish
are determined by the concerns and interests of Yahweh (miT 'JD1?,
'before Yahweh' framing David's speech in 21). But 22 reveals just
how much he is really governed by the status of melek and its concomitant honour in his own and his subject's eyes (Tl^p" and n~DDK, 'I
will court low esteem.. .let me gain myself honour' at the extremes of
22, TU3 and mnONn DB, 'in my own eyes, but among the serving-girls'
in the middle). The text's Michal has provoked David impetuously into
opening to view the gap between his overt actions and his covert aims,
and through this into betraying further his estrangement from another
than herself.
But the text's Michal fails to exploit her husband's vulnerability to
exposure as a hypocrite. In the face of this onslaught she is left speechless. The proud 'daughter of Saul' may still stand defiant, refusing to
the end to acknowledge that in Yahweh's will her husband has replaced
her father. But Michal stands forlorn. All relations between 'the king of
Israel' and 'the daughter of Saul', the twin verities in her view of herself and the world, are at an end. Isolated from her fellows, and now
145
totally estranged from her husband, 'the daughter of Saul' is, like her
father before her, forsaken by God. The narrator's own last word about
'Michal daughter of Saul' is chillingly measured and matter-of-fact
after the overwrought invective between husband and wife. In memorable simplicity, rhetorically pointed with a murmuring litany of ^s and
Qs,96 he notes her lifelong curse of barrenness (23).97 If, then, David is
to gain for his household the blessing of divinely supported rule he so
craves, it will not be with or through Michal.98
4.3. Narrative Structure and Technique in 2 Samuel 6
Let us now stand back from the detail revealed by our close reading, to
get a sense of the narrative's architectural sweep. The foundation for
the many subtleties of nuance we have observed in the narrative in 2
Samuel 6 is nothing other than a common and essentially simple type
of plot, in which a desired goal is eventually attained, but not before a
serious and unforeseen obstacle has jeopardized its achievement.99
Accordingly, at its simplest, this type of plot is articulated into two
main sequences: from the initiation of action for achieving the goal up
to the interposition of the obstacle; and from the overcoming of the
obstacle to the final attainment of the initial goal. The first two episodes
in 2 Samuel 6 correspond well to these two sequences:
(1) 6.1-11: David sets in train the bringing of the ark from Baal
Judah to the 'city of David', but is baulked in the accomplishing
of his intention by the incident at Perez Uzzah, and therefore
96. There are six bs in the first seven words of the verse, one being supplied by
the use of an otiose rh; and three Qs in the ten words of the verse, two of those
coming together in its last two words.
97. 2 Sam. 21.8 MT attributes five sons to 'Michal the daughter of Saul'. But
this same text gives her husband as 'Adriel...the Meholathite', whom 1 Sam.
18.19b asserts was the husband of Saul's elder daughter Merab, and the reading
'Merab' instead of 'Michal' in 2 Sam. 21.8 is found in some Hebrew and versional
manuscripts.
98. Let me repeat here, in case it has been lost to sight, that I am here seeking to
explicate the text's view of Michal. It should not be assumed that I personally concur in or sympathize with this view, and certainly not that I am unaware that a very
different account of Michal and David could have been given.
99. Clearly, this type of plot is fundamental to dramatic narrative, and consequently can be observed in most narratives from whatever source. It is nonetheless
informative to observe how it is developed in any given instance.
146
diverts the ark to the house of Obed Edom, which is unexpectedly blessed by Yahweh.
(2) 6.12-20a: the news that Yahweh has blessed the house of Obed
Edom encourages David to initiate a second attempt to realize his
plan, resulting in the installation of the ark in the city of David,
the blessing of the participants, and their dispersal homewards.
It can be seen immediately that the third episode 20b-23 falls outside
this plot schema, simply because it does not contribute anything essential to it: the basic action of this schema comes to an end in 19-20a.
Moreover, there are significant correspondences between 6.1-2 and
6.18-20a, indicative of an inclusio between these limits:
(1) In 6.1 David assembles (S]0[K]''1) a group to be participants100 in
the ceremonial procession of the ark; in 6.19b-20a the participants101 disperse homewards.
(2) The expression 'all the people' (DUH ^D) occurs in the narrative
onlyin2aaand!9b. 102
(3) David blesses the people in the name of mtQ2i iTliT (18b), using
the divine title (Dttf) of the god of the ark introduced in 6.2: these
are the only occurrences of this title in the narrative.
Further, we note that expressions of dispersal like 6.19b.20a occur
elsewhere in Samuel as episode close-outs.103 Indeed, the Chronicles
narrative of the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem, which does not
include the Michal-David confrontation, ends with 1 Chron. 16.43, its
equivalent of 2 Sam. 6.19b-20a, and the text then passes on to 17.1, its
equivalent of 2 Sam. 7.1.
100. As discussed above, the participants ultimately dispersed in 19b must
include more than the picked troops David assembles in v. 1, but this detail does
not invalidate the general correspondence of the two actions.
101. Though strictly in terms of the narrative development v. 2 refers to a group
assembled on an occasion at least three months earlier (1 la) than that of vv. 18-19,
the pragmatics of the narrative presuppose that the same group in all essentials is
referred to in both instances.
102. The expression ^"lET ITU "?3, 'all the house of Israel', also occurs twice
(5aa, 15aa), also in corresponding verses as we shall see below.
103. Compare, e.g., 1 Sam. 10.25-26; 15.34; 23.18; 24.23[22]; 2 Sam. 14.24,
where parallel expressions serve as major disjunctional episode close-outs. Note
also the similar function of the analogous expression ITU1? 2PK ID1?, 'go, each to
his own city', 1 Sam. 8.22bp. Elsewhere expressions of dispersal serve as minor
conjunctional episode close-outs, as, e.g., in 2 Sam. 12.15, 17.23.
147
4.3.1. The 'Similar Motion' System in 6.1-20a

We will return to the inclusio between 6.1-2 and 6.18-20a in 4.3.2
below. First, however, given that the basic plot of this narrative is of an
interrupted journey which is then completed, it will not be surprising to
find that the plot of the second episode, the resumed and completed
journey, to a significant degree runs in parallel to the movement of the
plot in the first episode, the interrupted journey. But this generally
parallel or similar motion104 of the two episodes (see Figure 11, p. 148)
leads to a different outcome in each, in that the journey in the first episode had to be curtailed because of an obstacle to its completion,
whereas the journey in the second episode smoothly attains its goal.
Thus we can expect that between the episodes, besides elements which
are parallel, there will also be those which do not correspond. It can be
seen, then, from Figure 11 that the action of the second episode
significantly parallels that of the first episode, with six of the eleven
plot elements occurring in both. This paralleling of action is reinforced
by the close similarity of language used to narrate the corresponding
elements, especially strong for elements (2) and (5). It will further be
noted that, in terms of plot development, the contrast between the
episodes is made by the fact that certain elements present in the one
episode are absent from the other. Thus the first episode begins with a
statement of assembling which is lacking in the second. Though
logically after a lapse of three months such a reassembling of the
participants in the ceremony would have been necessary, the narrative
conveys the notion of a merely interrupted journey by dispensing with
this element in the second episode. Equally, the participants in the
ceremony in the first episode logically must have dispersed. But again
the first episode does not narrate this, whereas the second episode
suitably includes this plot element as its conclusion. In the first episode
the complication (element 7) which interposes the obstacle to the
completion of the ark's journey, and David's aporia (element 8) arising
out of this, both naturally bulk large in the narrative. Equally naturally,
on the other hand, these elements are lacking in the second episode
104. I borrow the term 'similar motion', and its opposite 'contrary motion' as
used below, from the technical vocabulary of music, where they are used to denote
(1) the action of the hands and arms of a keyboard player, moving in parallel in the
same direction (similar motion) in the one case, or in opposite directions, either
diverging from, or converging on, each other (contrary motion) in the other; (2) by
analogy lines of musical text that move parallel or contrary to one another.
/i/of element
first episode 1-1 la
status
second episode 12b-20a
J_ assembling
lacking
2-3
12b
T removal of ark
3a
13
T cultic attendants
T ritual progress
3b.4a/%>
14
15
initiation of
action
cf.
cf.
cf.
If goal reached
y complication
_8_
10
TT
David'saporia
ark deposited
cultic
inauguration
dispersal
6a
6b-8
9-1 Oa
Wb-lla
16a
lacking
lacking
lacking
17b-19a
lacking
19b.20a
17acf.
Figure 11: Parallel and Contrastive Elements in the 'Similar Motion' System in 2 Sam. 6.1-20a
149
where no such complication arises. There, instead, narrative space is

devoted to the cultic inauguration of the ark in its new home (element
10). But this latter plot element is given no place in the first episode,
where the depositing of the ark in the house of Obed Edom is thus represented as a temporary expedient in inauspicious circumstances.
The above tabulation has not included 6.lib, 12a. This is because,
although 1 Ib and 12a clearly correspond to one another, they do not fit
the parallel motion structure, since they occur at opposite ends of their
respective episodes, lla at the end of the first, 12b at the beginning of
the second. So placed, they forge a link between the two episodes. The
resumption of the ark's journey is possible only if the divinely interposed obstacle to its continuation is perceived to be removed by Yahweh. lib narrates Yahweh's act of blessing on the house of Obed
Edom, which 12a, in reporting the matter to David, attributes to the
presence of the ark there. This is taken as the requisite divine initiative
which removes the obstacle to the fulfilling of the initial task and thus
allows the journey to resume, as it does in 12b. Thus, bringing this
function of 1 Ib and 12a into the reckoning, the parallel plot progression
in 6.1-20a may be represented diagrammatically as in Figure 12, p. 151.
The two horizontal sets represent the two episodes, with linear plot
progression moving left to right in each case. Parallel elements have
been set opposite each other in the vertical plane, and the two sets have
been joined by setting the contiguous link elements lib and 12a
between the two sets.105 This yields a diagrammatic representation of
the similar motion of the two episodes, showing the six elements which
articulate this structure in each, as well as the five which fall outside it.
It can thus be seen that the similar motion structure carries the basic
story of the progress of the ark, from its cultic conveyance after
removal from the shrine at Baal Judah until its diversion into the house
of Obed Edom, and then its resumed cultic conveyance until its installation in the city of David: a two-stage journey in which the stages
essentially run in parallel. But, as we have seen in our close reading,
there is much more to this narrative than is articulated by this simple
structure on its own. The complexity arises from another structural
105. Thus it is merely the exigency of a diagram setting parallel elements opposite one another in the vertical plane which causes the link-line to run right to left.
To help counter any diagrammatic implication that this in any way reverses linear
plot progression, the link-line is shown as broken.
150
system, by means of which the two episodes run in a contrary motion to

one another.
4.3.2. The 'Contrary Motion' System in 6.1-20a
We noted in the preceding section that lib and 12a closely correspond
with one another, both in content and expression. But we earlier
observed that 6.1-2 and 6.18-20a also showed a set of marked correspondences. Thus we can now see that the beginning of each episode in
6.1-20a corresponds to the end of the other. This would suggest that the
plot movement of the one episode moves in a contrary motion106 to the
other, whereby the first episode starts with a state of initial rest and
ends with a state of complication, whereas the second episode begins
with the state of complication and concludes with a state of rest.
Exploring 6.1-20a further in the light of this reveals another structure of
correspondences between the two episodes, which articulates the stages
of such a contrary motion system. And just as we did for the structures
identified in 5.17-25 above, so here we may again most suitably represent this structure in 6.1-20a diagrammatically with a parabola whose
vertex points downwards (Figure 13, p. 151).
In this system the correspondences between elements in the two
episodes are as a rule antithetic, for example, 1 assembling of participants versus 1' dispersing of participants, 2 initiatory action versus 2'
concluding action etc. The corresponding elements are normally quite
proportional to one another, with the notable exception of elements 7 to
7' and 8 to 8'. The observable disproportion in these instances is due to
the fact that narration of an obstacle-beset complication (7, 8) requires
more space than narration of obstacle-free progress (7', 8'). Furthermore, although the contrary motion system can clearly be seen to
operate throughout the narrative, it is also evident that it is at times
accommodated to other narrative demands. Thus 3', the invocation in
blessing of Yahweh of Hosts, the god of the ark (18b), occurs, as in
narrative logic it must, between 18a and 19a, the two parts which make
up element 2', David's completion of the sacrifices and distribution to
the people. Or again, the two central elements in the second episode, 5'
cultic attendants on the ark's journey, and 6' ritual accompaniment to
106. Thus in the diagram below, to move in turn from one set of corresponding
elements in the two episodes to the next produces such a contrary motion, either
converging if one begins at the extremities of the parabola, or diverging if one
begins at its vertex.
10
11
participants
assembled
action
initiated
ark
removed
cultic attendants
ritual
progress
goal
reached
complication
David's
aporia
ark
deposited
cultic inauguration
dispersal
Figure 12: 'Similar Motion' Progression Structure in 2 Sam. 6.1-20a
Key:
1 participants assembled
2 action begun
3 god of the ark named
4 ark removed from shrine
5 cultic attendants on journey
10 place of deposition blessed

9 journey aborted
8 David's aporia
7 obstacle to completion interposed
6 ritual accompaniment on journey
10' blessing reported

9' journey resumed
8' aporia dispelled
7' chance of fresh obstacle averted
6' ritual accompaniment on journey
Figure 13: 'Contrary Motion' Progression Structure in 2 Sam. 6.1-20a
1' participants dispersed

2' action concluded
3' god of ark invoked for blessing
4' ark installed in new shrine
5' cultic attendant on journey
152
the ark's journey, occur in the same narrative order as 5 and 6 in the
first episode, rather than in the reverse order, in accord with a strict
working out of the 'contrary motion' system. Moreover, both the latter
are instances of direct rather than antithetic correspondence,107 and a
direct correspondence also characterizes 10 and 10', the two elements at
the vertex of the parabola, the turning point of the whole narrative.
Structures are employed flexibly to serve narrative exigencies.
Examining the correspondences which articulate the contrary motion
structure in 6.1-20a show that, while it also deals with the ritual journey
of the ark, it does so with a very strong focus on the role of David. In
this structure 15 out of the 20 items focus around David, and whereas
there are 23 separate references to the ark in 6.1-20a, there are some 30
to David.108 But these figures are merely a superficial reflection of the
fact that the whole story is told from the point of view of David's
involvement in the matter. Nor is this merely that, because tradition
recorded that it was David who brought the ark from Baal Judah to
Jerusalem, he must needs play a role in the narrative. Chapter 6.1
coordinates the ensuing narrative, through the opening wayyiqtol verb,
with the preceding narrative, albeit in a way not immediately clear, as
another in a coherent set of David's actions. The focus on David continues by highlighting his initiative in the removal of the ark
(mûn1?... "l^l Dp"H 6.2). The subsequent shift of focus away from
David to the ark attendants in 3-4 and 6-7, necessitated by the plot, is
itself broken into by a brief refocus on David in 6.5, before 6.8 once
again restores him to the centre of attention, a position that David monopolizes for the rest of the narrative to 6.20a.109
107. Note that there is thus an 'intersection' of the parallel and contrary motion
systems at these points in the narrative.
108. I have included pronominal anaphora in the above figures, but have counted
the two instances of directly coordinated verbs (2aa, 12b) as one reference only: if
these were counted separately the figure for David would increase by two. I have
included 16a in the count, but not 16b (which I assign to episode 3): including the
latter would add another two references to David. The figure of 30(32) references to
David in episodes 1 and 2 includes the Lucianic plus in 6.12b, which contains
three.
109. Only momentarily in 17a is there the slightest shift away from David. As I
indicated in my close reading above, there is also a change of point of view in 6.16,
but this verse belongs with the third episode, which we are not considering at this
point, and in any case the verse serves in the end to strengthen the overall focus on
David, as we shall see below.
153
Furthermore, the climax of the second episode is not reached in

David's depositing the ark in his tent-shrine in Jerusalem (17), but
rather in his bestowal, actual and attempted, of the blessing of the god
of the ark (18-20a). Just how central to this narrative of the ark is the
theme of blessing by the god of the ark may now be observed. Thus
how Yahweh is invoked through the ark-cult as the divine warrior-king
YHWH Sebd'ot is pointedly noted when David removes it from Baal
Judah (2bp). Yet this title for Yahweh reappears again in the text only
when David, having installed the ark in his royally sponsored shrine,
bestows blessing on the people in the name of YHWH Sebd'ot (18b-19).
The theme continues right to the end of the second episode, where
David seeks separately and particularly to bestow the blessing on his
own royal household (20a). But this thematic emphasis has already
been carefully built up earlier in the narrative, right at the narrative's
turning point in 11-12, the juncture of the two episodes:110
(1) the sheer repetition between lib and 12a alone makes the issue
of blessing salient at this point;
(2) the crucial link between the blessing and the ark, implicit already
in the cause-effect narrative logic operating in lla.b, is rhetorically stressed by the phrase explicitly acknowledging it (QTI^Kn
"pIN "Tnin, 'on account of the ark' 12a) being kept back to the
end of the report to David;
(3) the climactic quest to bring the ark-blessing to his own household (20a) has been quite specifically foreshadowed in the Davidic interior monologue ensuing from the report (the Lucianic
plus in 6.12).
Thus the 'similar motion' system in episodes one and two carries the
basic story of the vicissitudes in the ark's progress, whereas the 'contrary motion' system carries the thematic narrative of David's attempt
to gain control of the god of the ark and of his blessing.
4.3.3. The Michal-David Episode 6.16, 20-23
We saw above that 6.16b, 20b-23 have no structural function within
either of the two systems, the 'similar motion' or the 'contrary motion',
which articulate the first two episodes in 6.1-20a. In fact, structurally
this third episode has its own integrity, demarcated by the inclusio
between the extremes of the episode, 16 and 23, represented by the
110. See above 4.2.1, 4.2.2, pp. 130-33.
154
enclosing circle in the following diagrammatic tabulation (Figure 14,

p. 155).
Within this envelope the speeches of both Michal and David (20-22)
are each dominated by the remaining two constituents of 16b. Michal,
consumed with contempt for the way David has demeaned the royal
status she cherishes, disdains to cloak her scorn under a conventional
greeting (20). David, goaded by Michal's frustration of his plan as
much as by her vituperation, disdains her contempt (21-22). What
Michal saw David doing and how she responded to what she saw thus
comes into fateful collision with David's account of his actions.
Michal's withering look through the window in the upshot withers none
but herself, in her cherished status as queen and presumed destiny as
queen mother. But her proud refusal to yield to the momentum of
David's project and dutifully play her expected part in proceedings
provokes her husband into unintentional and oblique betrayal of his real
motives.
Thus, notwithstanding its own structure different from those that
articulate the first two episodes, the third episode is seamlessly worked
into the narrative of the ark's journey. Syntactically 16b is integral with
16a, and 20b contextually presupposes 20a: yet both 16a and 20a are
integral in each of the systems which articulate the first two episodes.111
Then further, 16 is clearly integral to 20-23, since the character who
briefly enters the scene in 16 does not come into her own until 20-23,
and the terms of the altercation between Michal and David in 20-22
presuppose the earlier scene. Yet, as our close reading has shown, the
brief stock scene (the woman waiting at the window for the hero's
return) used to introduce Michal in 16, while it dovetails her into the
narrative as a natural participant at that point,112 in fact, through its
deformation, foreshadows further untoward development. That development then occurs within a complementary stock scene (the woman
111. In fact, while 16a fits into both the parallel motion and contrary motion
systems, since it duplicates the function of 17a, it is not essential to either system.
Thus its main purpose is to integrate 16b, as a further complication whose own
denouement comes in 20b-23, into the denouement of the basic plot about the
removal of the ark to Jerusalem. The function of 6.20a is different from that of
6.16a, in that, taken with 19b, it forms the conclusion to the narrative's second
episode (12-20a), but at the same time, taken with 20ba, it initiates the action of the
third episode (20-23). Thus it is appropriate to count 20a in both the second and
third episodes.
112. On this see in detail above 4.2.2, pp. 134-35, with n. 71.
Figure 14: Structure in Episode 3, 2 Sam. 6.16b, 20-23
156
coming out to welcome the returning hero), also tellingly deformed in

order to dramatize the rift between wife and husband, and through this
to throw into question David's professed devotion to Yahweh.
In terms of plot development, then, this third episode in the narrative
serves to disrupt David's plan once again, just as did the death of Uzza
in episode one. This disruption, however, will not now prevent his
bringing the ark to its physical goal, an aim virtually achieved at the
time Michal appears on the scene as a passive if hostile witness to proceedings (16). Instead, it will obstruct David's consummating the
politico-religious aim of his plan, by aborting David's attempt to channel the blessing of the ark on to his household (20).113 Thus the seamless weaving of this episode into the story of the ark's journey furthers
the thematic development of the David story in the stretch of text with
which we are concerned in this book. For, as we have seen, the issue of
the ark-blessing emerged as central precisely at the turning-point (lib,
12a) in the narrative of the journey of the ark in episodes one and two.
And we shall see that it is not resolved until the final section of our text
in 2 Samuel 7, where David emphatically cedes all possibility of its
control to Yahweh. The Michal-David episode in 6.16, 20-23 is then,
in basic plot, a sequence about Michal and her fateful estrangement
from David, an estrangement which symbolizes the divine rejection of
the house of Saul. Thematically, however, it focuses on a David whose
scheming to secure monarchic status and blessing betrays a growing
estrangement from Yahweh.
4.4. Summary: Theme, Rhetoric and Ideology in 6.1-23
It is now time to bring together the individually articulated frames of
our detailed discussion to form an overall picture of the ideological
rhetoric in this section of our text. The narrative sequence in 2 Samuel
6 begins at a high point for David, victorious over his major enemy,
and able to celebrate the victory for himself and for Yahweh, with the
triumphal procession of the ark. In the face of such public acknowledgment of Yahweh's role in the victory, that David did not consult
113. It is probably no mere accident that this further complication is foreshadowed in the second episode at precisely that point in the 'parallel motion' system
which corresponds to the introduction of the complication in the first episode. I do
not maintain that this was necessarily a conscious authorial decision, since, according to modern psychology, subliminal decisions reflect subconscious intentions.
157
Yahweh over the removal of the ark does not immediately obtrude
itself on the reader. How could Yahweh fail to be favourable to the
ark's rescue from obscurity, to become the centre piece of the new
Israel he was creating through David? Was the ceremony not being carried out in due form by all Israel before the approving presence of Yahweh himself (miT ^^sb 5)? Such readerly assumptions and/or reflections
about David's project are encouraged by the orderly progress of the
narrative down to 6.5.
However, just when it is on the point of culmination, David's plan is
frighteningly undercut by Yahweh's unexpected and inexplicable
onslaught against Uzza. David's oblique likening of Yahweh's intervention to his overpowering surge against the Philistines (5.20) is very
revealing, for it suggests that behind his angry perplexity is a barely
articulated sense of cohesion in both divine acts. Yet, unlike the first,
the second clearly did not serve David's interests as he perceived them.
Hence David's fear of Yahweh is seen to stem from an inchoate realization that Yahweh's will and power, far from being at his disposal, may
even be set against him.
But this is a momentary insight, and once the shock of Yahweh's
outburst had abated, David only too easily falls to calculating within
himself what is in his own interest. This part of the narrative (6.9-12)
derives much of its rhetorical force from its betraying David's interior
monologue, exposing to the implied reader thoughts David dare not
articulate. In this way his bringing of the ark to the city of David is
repeatedly shown to have been selfishly motivated C'PK 9a, V^K lOa),
supremely so in his resolve, as melek (12aa), to commandeer from
Obed Edom the ark-blessing vouchsafed by Yahweh (12ay). Nowhere
in this internal reflection is there manifested the slightest concern for
the interests of Yahweh and his people. Not surprising, then, that at this
juncture also David fails to consult Yahweh.
On the contrary, David presumptuously exercises to the full his monarchical prerogative of priesthood 'before Yahweh', leading the arkprocession (14a), celebrating the installation rites (17b), and bestowing
the blessing upon the people in the name of Yahweh of Hosts (18b).
Moreover, the presumption is apparently vindicated by the successful
conclusion of the procession. But above and beyond this smoothly
proceeding exercise of melek-ship over cult and people, a regal
onlooker disdains the melek's behaviour (16). This imports into the
very midst of the otherwise cosy scene an alien and hostile view of
158
David's actions. Thus, even as the implied narrator is disposing the

implied reader not to side directly with Michal, these actions are revivifying the reader's barely allayed doubts about what David is up to.
Then, on the threshold of its consummation, the blessing of his own
household, David's covert intention in the triumphal relocation of the
ark is thwarted by Michal's scathing victor's welcome. Her sardonic
ascription of honour to David as melek over Israel once again puts that
role into question for the reader in a deeply disturbing way. In our text
David is cast in this role only at times when his behaviour is most in
doubt for the reader. His explosive reply to Michal's 'greeting', in
demolishing the lofty regal status from which she taunts him, betrays
the deep contradiciton between his public behaviour and his private
inclinations. Is he after being the ndgid over Yahweh's people he professes, or the melek over his subjects Michal presumes? Are his actions
so emphatically 'before Yahweh' as he affirms (21), or is he actually
more concerned with how he stands in his own eyes and those of his
subjects (22)?
His final disdainful riposte to Michal, a thrust of deadly sharpness
double-edged in the verbs 'be low' (^p) and 'be honoured' (~QD), is
ominously reminiscent of another similarly pointed response elsewhere
in Samuel: 'those who honour me I will honour, but those who despise
me will be laid low' (ftp1' 'm "nDK H3DD O 1 Sam. 2.30bp). So Yahweh informed the house of Eli, indicted for setting self-interest above
their service to Yahweh, that the blessing of an unconditioned divine
commission in perpetuity (1 Sam. 2.28, 30a) is not an unconditiona/
blessing. Similarly, in grasping now after the regal honour he covets,
David is running a grave risk of treating Yahweh with contempt, and
thus losing the blessing of a royal house in perpetuity Yahweh is
preparing to bestow.
Thus the alienated Michal's sardonic detachment is used to force the
scheming David now to betray himself by impetuous speech. In
2 Samuel 6 the absence of the consultation of Yahweh, the lack of the
hearing and responding to the divine word, features which so characterized 2 Sam. 5.17-25, becomes potently thematic. For in dramatizing the
estrangement between Michal and David, these virulent exchanges in
fact expose the extent of the estrangement between David and Yahweh.
Yes, David can stiffly enunciate, in the theologically correct terms, the
role for which Yahweh has chosen him (21), but even then only to
make of it an unanswerable taunt against the Saulide Michal. But there
159
is far more passion evident in his riposte (22) to Michal's jibe against
his royal honour. This covert pretension to the status of melek over
against the role of nagid marked out for him by Yahweh, unintentionally betrayed by him in this scene, David pursues into the last section
(2 Sam. 7) of our stretch of text.
Chapter 5
DAVID AND YAHWEHFROM DIFFERENCE

TO DEFERENCE: 2 SAMUEL 7
The theme of David's difference with Yahweh, which we found to
emerge more and more insistently in 2 Samuel 6, comes dramatically to
a head in 2 Samuel 7. The king's attempt to finesse Yahweh with his
oblique proposal to build a splendid house for Yahweh, looks to have
succeeded when a deferential Nathan replies with unconditional divine
approval (7.1-3). But Yahweh himself now enters the game, and insists
on playing it out with all cards face up. First he trumps David by
roundly rejecting David's proposal (7.4-7). Then, switching to his
strong suit, his prior initiative in all that concerns David and Israel (7.81 la), Yahweh plays his ace, the house he will make for David in perpetuity (7.11b-17). David, who has no strength left in his hand, concedes
the game to Yahweh, acknowledging the supremacy of the divine
power and will (7.18-29). This final section of our text, then, exposes
David's difference with Yahweh, showing it as rooted in his royal pretension, and resolves it by a robust assertion of the divine prerogative,
to which David totally defers.
5.1.2. Narrative Connections: Scene, Time, Plot
Chapter 7 opens with a scene having a different, but not discontinuous,
locale from the close of 2 Samuel 6. In 7.la we are told that David is at
home in his house. Now it was on the very threshold of his house that
Michal aborted David's intention to bestow the blessing of the ark on
his household in the final scene of 2 Samuel 6. Thus scenically 7.la
could be readtacitly assuming temporal continuity with the last scene
of ch. 6as David now having as it were pushed past Michal and
ensconced himself within his house. However, already somewhat
5. David and Yahweh
161
against such a reading is that the preceding episode actually concluded

with a supra scenam and extra temporem narratorial statement about
Michal's lifelong barrenness (6.23). Such an episode close-out tends to
dampen readerly expectation of immediate scenic and temporal continuity in what follows.
But in fact the temporal relation between the close of 2 Samuel 6 and
the opening of 2 Samuel 7 is not immediately apparent. The explanatory parenthesis, 7.1b, inserted between la and its syntactical continuation in 2, is susceptible of different readings. It could be just reminding
the reader of the situation already established by 5.25, that is, the one
which has obtained throughout the events of 2 Samuel 6, and thus not
necessarily implicate any temporal discontinuity. On the other hand, the
comprehensive terms of la ('from all his enemies round about', ITHOQ
V^N 'PDQ) rather suggest a more developed situation than 5.25, requiring time and effort to effect, not here reported on. This impression of an
implicated lapse of time is reinforced in 7.2. For David's realization of
the incongruity between the ark's simple tent and his elaborate cedar
palace to be convincing,1 a greater lapse of time must be involved than
would have been possible between his installing the ark in the tent prepared for it and entering his house later on the same day. Thus a timelapse between the events of 2 Samuel 6 and 2 Samuel 7 is evidently, if
rather obliquely, implied in 7.1-2. No attempt to make it explicit is
made, not even by the use of a relatively vague indicator like 'some
time later' (p """TIN: contrast 8.1). The immediacy of the operative plotcum-thematic continuity with the preceding is not to be sacrificed to the
distancing involved in too definite a temporal linking.
In terms of plot, by reopening the question of the housing of the ark,
7.2 establishes significant continuity with 2 Samuel 6. As we saw in our
previous chapter, the plot sequence in 6.2-20 revolved around the
removal and rehousing of the ark. In the context of 2 Samuel 6 that
issue was apparently definitively resolved by David's ceremonial
installation of the ark in the city of David 'in its (proper) place' (IQlpQ^
6.17). But here in 2 Samuel 7, ostensibly in the light of further
reflection, yesterday's proper cultic setting is now thought so unfitting,
that David plans to rehouse the ark yet again.
1. Here simply reading the text at face value: on further implicatures in

David's statement-question, see the close reading, 5.2.1.1 below.
162

A cursory reading is sufficient to show that the text of 2 Samuel 7 falls
naturally into two nearly equal parts: vv. 1-17, David's intention to
build a temple for the ark, and the oracle from Yahweh provoked
thereby; vv. 18-29, David's prayer in response to Yahweh's oracle. It is
appropriate, therefore, to divide our reading into two major sections,
corresponding to these two units.2 Further inspection of the text indicates that these major parts readily divide into subunits. Thus within
7.1-17 we have in 1-3 the exchange between David and Nathan on the
rehousing of the ark, and in 4-17 Yahweh's oracular response to this,
which further resolves itself into three well-defined speech segments, 47, 8-1 la, llb-16, rounded off by the concluding narrative statement 17.
David's prayer is not so definitely articulated into sub-units, but we
may justifiably see 'accordingly' (p ^) in 22 as introducing an intermezzo in praise of Yahweh's incomparability, and 'so now' (nnui) in
25 as resuming from 18-21 the main theme of the prayer, Yahweh's
promise to David. Accordingly, this points to three subunits in the
prayer: 18-21, 22-24, and 25-29.
5.2.1. Verses 1-17
Viewed scenically, this first part of the final section of our stretch of
text divides into three: the opening scene between the king and Nathan
(1-3); the second, the oracle communicated the same night by Yahweh
to Nathan (4-16); and the third, Nathan's conveyance of the oracle to
David (17). However, this third is not a scene in any dramatic sense,
since all we are given is the briefest narratorial summary of the action.
Nor is there any more dramatic action proper to the long second scene.
Such action as there is is purely skeletal to the speech, and is again
conveyed by a quite summary and conventional narratorial statement
(4). Only the first scene has any action worthy of the name, and that
only just: the king engages in a short verbal exchange with the prophet
Nathan.
2. Most discussion of 2 Sam. 7the bibliography of which is almost endlesshas been focused on identifying a historical or theological kernel, which is
then discussed within a putative religio-historical context, in isolation from the rest
of its given textual context. My reading will demonstrate just how cohesive and
integrated a text 7.1-29 is, apart from 13a(b), on which see the detailed discussion
in 5.2.1.4, especially pp. 194-99.
5. David and Yahweh
163
From this brief summary it is evident that 2 Samuel 7 effects a rapid

and marked shift away from plot action towards verbal exposition. In
the first scene (1-3) David's bare dozen words convey the feeling of an
argument already in progress. His manipulative question and Nathan's
toadying reply are then engulfed in the flood tide of Yahweh's rejoinder. The reader is swept along by its robust rhetoric to its climax in the
dynastic promise. Hence what structures the reader's experience of this
text is the segments into which this magisterial argument divides, rather
than its ancillary scenic divisions. These segments in Yahweh's speech
are formally marked off by the oracle formulae in 4-5a and 8aa, and, in
1 Iba, by the performative introduction to a solemn pronouncement in
third person form.
5.2.1.1. Verses 1-3
The episode begins with a somewhat complex construction: a protasis
consisting of TP1 plus a temporal "O clause 'and thus it was when...'
(la), answered by a wayyiqtol apodosis 'that the king said...' ("IQNVI
"j^QH 2aa). But the two parts of this construction are separated by a
parenthetic x-qatal clause 'at the time Yahweh had given David
rest...' (Ib). We will look at these two syntactical constituents in
turn. First, the protasis-apodosis. It is the function of the protasis 'when
the king was settled (HK1T) in his own house (rvn)' (Ib) to give relevant
context for the apodosis, 'the king said to Nathan the prophet...' (2aa).
Yet this information is almost immediately duplicated in David's opening words to Nathan 'I am settled (ntfr) in a cedar house (DT"IN rYQ)'
(2ay). Now in fact, as we shall see, David's ensconcement in his
splendid palace is quite material to the conclusion to which he wants to
lead Nathan, and thus these latter words are an ineluctable part of his
utterance. But in that case why did the text not dispense with this
redundant la, and make Ib the protasis to v. 2, thus: 'when Yahweh
had given the king rest.. .the king said...' ('131 -pl> mrr rnn O sm)?
The rhetorical reason for the anticipation of 2ay by la is to give
particular salience to the repeated terms, 'be installed, dwell' (HEP), and
'(fixed permanent) dwelling, house' (fPH). For the related notions of
permanent residence (H2T) and a fixed abode (m) are of central
thematic importance in this final section of our text.
Now for the parenthesis 'Yahweh had given him rest roundabout
from all his enemies' (Ib). As noted above, this assertion would
appear, without any additional narrative support, to widen the scope of
164
David's security beyond what was established in 5.17^25. In the given

context, therefore, the reader must assume that the crushing of Philistine aggression spelt the end of all hostile activity against David, at
least for the time being. Thus the function of the parenthesis in its context is to provide information relevant to the state of affairs being set
out in the protasis-apodosis. David, it explains, can be installed in his
own house in this way, and can properly exercise his mind on rehousing the ark, because he is not engaged with the paramount kingly activity of fighting wars. He may thus turn his attention to another fitting
preoccupation for a melek, the appropriate housing of the tutelary
deity.3
That this is indeed the intended ideological context for what is being
narrated here is made further evident by the singular and insistent way
in 1-3 David is referred to solely by the CN 'the king': three times in
short order, once in each verse, David is thus denominated (f^Dn la,
2acc, 3aa). The one who but a moment before, in textual terms, proclaimed his God-given role as nagid over against Michal's defence of
melek-ship (6.20-21), is now paraded before the reader as through and
through acting the melek. The point is further subtly made by the
contrast in the introduction of Nathan, who is given his PN in addition
to the CN 'the prophet' designating his function. A royal palace may
house more than one prophet, but only one king.
The king's address to Nathan opens with an imperative 'look here'
(nisn 2ap),4 which connotes a degree of argumentative impatience.5 But
3. On the wider ideological background to this line of thought see Ch. 7

below, and for the role of Ib in a Deuteronomistic reading of 2 Sam. 7 see my
Claim for Power (forthcoming). 1 Chron. 17.1 omits this parenthesis, evidently
because in the ideology of Chronicles the assertion it makes is appropriate only to
Solomon; cf. 1 Chron. 22.9, and note how 1 Chron. 17.10a|3 = 2 Sam. 7.1 lap has
been reformulated.
4. nisn here is altogether more robust than the H]n of 1 Chron. 17.1ba: the
Chronicler avoids imputing to David any suggestion of truculence, as being out of
keeping with the presentation of David in Chronicles.
5. As is well illustrated by Moses' use of it twice in remonstrance with Yahweh in Exod. 33.12-13 thus: 12 ... 'Look here (ntt~l), you keep saying to me, "Bring
up this people", but you haven't made known to me who is to go with me, despite
your having said, "I know you by name, and you have also found favour in my
sight". 13Well then, if I really have found favour in your sight, reveal your way to
me so that I may know you, and continue to find favour in your sight. After all
5. David and Yahweh
165
here its normal aggressiveness is somewhat softened by the particle W,

in this context perhaps best represented by 'I say' or 'now', as in 'I say,
look here...' or 'Look here now...' There is thus an intriguing combination of truculence and ingratiation in this address to Nathan, suggestive of a subtext behind the surface discourse.
Furthermore, David's utterance is oblique, since he presents Nathan
with no more than the bare premises of an a fortiori-type argument
(2apyb). Logically, this obliquity makes the argument's conclusion
ambiguous,6 but pragmatically it is clear enough what David intends:
namely, that he should build a housing for the ark at least equal in
splendour to his own cedar palace.7 Yet David's argumentative opening
'look here now' (N] rwi), combined with the obliqueness of his words,
belie something deeper, less straightforward. Why need the king argue
with Nathan? Why does David not say in so many words what he has in
mind? So far in our text Nathan has said not a word. Nor does anything
in the text subsequently suggest that Nathan had any knowledge of the
king's plan prior to David's broaching it here. In other words, there is
nothing to support an implicature that it is Nathan who needs to be persuaded by the king.
Who, then, is it who needs persuading? Since 'the king' initiates the
discourse, and in the absence of any other possible addressee in the
context, it can only be with his own reflections and anticipations that
David is arguing so truculently. In his combative approach to Nathan
David in fact reflects his own unease, either about the action he plans to
take, or its motives, or both. Accordingly, his strategy in initiating the
exchange with Nathan is to use the monarch-menial relationship to
extract from the court prophet overt divine approval for his plan, in
(HK1), this nation is your people.' Compare also 2 Sam. 15.27-28: The king said to
Zadok the priest, 'Don't you see (reading nntf nt*i"in with MT; alternatively, with
LXXB Wl, or with LXXL iron, 'look here, you'), return to the city... Look (rran), /
will wait...'
6. Logically, the argument could as cogently lead to the conclusion that David
ought to abandon his splendid palace for something more in keeping with the ark's
humble surroundings! But the contextual pragmatics effectively suppress this as a
possible implicature.
7. Klostermann (1887: 156 note on v. 3) therefore supposes that our text has
been shortened, to omit the details of David's plan which David must have told to
Nathan. But this supposition reads the text too matter-of-factly, failing to recognize
the rhetoric behind the ellipsis of our text.
166
order to override his own unspoken and perhaps barely acknowledged

misgivings.8
In whose interests is the plan? David intends Nathan to see it as
being in the interests of Yahweh, and to respond accordingly. But the
reader who has just read 2 Samuel 6 is likely to suspect David of at
least as strong an interest in promoting his own royal estate. In other
words, the real, unstated, argument is 'whereas 7 "the king" dwell in an
appropriately splendid house, the shabby tent-skins that shelter the ark,
symbol of the royally sponsored god Yahweh, demean that status'.
David's use of the term 'tent-skins' (i"UTT 2b(3) is polemically coloured, to suggest both meagreness and impermanency.9 When he
comes to refer to this below, Yahweh will substitute the quite differently coloured 'tent-dwelling' (pta ^K 6bp).
Nathan responds with courtly alacrity to the king's implicit verbal
signals. The latter has barely time to catch his breath before the prophet
in three staccato phrases (3a0b) has eagerly given the divine imprimatur
to what David proposes.10 Nathan too remains coyly allusive, unconditionally committing Yahweh to underwrite a plan explicit only in the
mind of the king: 'everything you have in mind' ("]33^3 "ICON *?D 3a(3)!
Yet this continued eschewing of open statement between king and
prophet, prophet and king nags at the back of the reader's mind. Moreover, this particular readerly anxiety is reinforced by another, also only
8. This reading, and similar subsequent readings in this and the following
chapter, is of the actions and motivations of the characters called David and Nathan
in this text, and is not to be read as asserting anything about a historical David or a
historical Nathan.
9. The term is metonymic in a way similar to our 'canvas' or 'tarpaulin', terms
in English which, in comparison to 'tent' or 'marquee', similarly nuance ideas of
meagreness and impermanency.
10. Herrmann (1953-54: 58 = 1986: 137) sees this as analogous to 'der Hymnus
der Beamten' in the Egyptian 'royal novel': but more significant than the mere discrepancy in numbers about which Herrmann is so exercised, between just one
official here and the many there (1953-54: 58 = 1986: 136), is that, unlike the
Egyptian officials, Nathan is here identified as a prophet (7.2), and thus his response to David is given an altogether different significance from theirs to the
Pharaoh. Herrmann's later reconsideration of this text actually flattens out the role
of Nathan in 2 Sam. 7 to one fully comparable to the Egyptian officials: 'We find
also in this frame the fundamental principles of the Jerusalem kingship like "I will
be his father and he shall be my son"and this is announced by a prophet and
ministry in the king's house comparable to the Egyptian officials standing around
the king in his palace' (1985: 125).
5. David and Yahweh
167
subliminally perceived at this point. There is no tangible evidence that

Nathan consulted Yahweh before giving the king this complaisant
reply.11 Rather, a royal functionary has here responded with obligatory
total deference to the unstated intentions of the melek.
In this brief opening scene, then, 'the king' appears fully in control of
his royal destiny. Under no threat from external enemies, he is firmly
ensconced in his house of houses, and able, through his court prophet,
to command the instant support of his tutelary deity, whom indeed the
king now expects to accept without demur the luxury the royal hand
can provide. In the light of Nathan's perfunctory acquiescence, the
argumentativeness of David's approach to the prophet looks grotesquely inappropriate. Revealingly, the king had expected from Yahweh's
ostensible spokesman a resistance to his plan that, at first, failed to
eventuate. The anticipated resistance, however, does soon materialize,
though not in the way expected.
5.2.1.2. Verses 4-7
Yahweh himself, all the time pursuing his own agenda as it turns out,
rapidly manifests how little complaisant he is towards the king's plans,
how little acquiescent he is in the role David has for him in his kingdom. 'That (very) night' Nathan receives, all unsolicited, a hard-hitting
oracle from Yahweh. Spare as the narrative framework is, it must needs
make the point that Yahweh holds his hand no longer. The piling up
here of three utterances (4b, 5aa, 5a(5) enunciating the reception and
mediating of a divine oracle highlights their complete absence in v. 3,
retrospectively calling into complete question the authority of Nathan's
earlier response. Thus, in contrast to Nathan's servile reply in v. 3,
where his glib assurance to David is underwritten by nothing other than
his royal office, 4b-5a make elaborately and formally clear to the reader
that it is only what now follows that is invested with the divine authority. They only are spokespersons for Yahweh who have received,
directly from Yahweh, a message totally independent of the human
pressures bearing upon its deferent!
Moreover, Yahweh's identification of the addressee of his oracle as
11. Nathan's concluding "[QJ> mrP "D offers a glibly conventional assurance of
divine approval and help, such as does not even require the lips of a prophet to
utter: cf. Saul in 1 Sam. 17.37, the woman of Tekoa in 2 Sam. 14.17, etc. The contrast to the formally prophetic style of Nathan's subsequent discourse is marked.
168
'my subject,12 David' dramatically changes the relationships depicted

hitherto between David and Nathan, and between David and Yahweh.
No longer is David 'the king' tout court to Nathan as court functionary,
able to demand divine imprimatur from the latter as of royal right. Now
David is put in his place as a menial in Yahweh's court, David by
name, who must listen submissively and respectfully to Nathan as Yahweh's spokesman delivering Yahweh's message. Rhetorically, Yahweh
conveys this subtly but clearly, by using the x-CN x-PN string 'to my
subject, to David' (5aa), which separates out, and thus makes more
pointed, the relational term.13 Moreover, Yahweh stresses the point by
reiterating the same string in 8aa below.
What is the message that has been so portentously prefaced? In full,
the message occupies the next eleven and a half verses, and falls into
three clear segments. But these segments are stages in the development
of one cohesive argument, whose unity and direction are foreshadowed
in its five opening words: 'is it that you will build me a settled houseT
(TDCft m '*? HiDD nnn 5b). There are three features of this brief initial utterance important to note.
First, its lively question-form14 gives the utterance concentrated rhetorical force.15 The speaker's clear rejection of its implied proposition
12. The Hebrew term ~QI? (and its female equivalents nnDEJ/TIOK) broadly represents the designee as subject to the will of another, whether enforced (1) legally,
i.e. the designee is a slave, or indentured or hired servant; or (2) politically, i.e. he
or she is a subject of a sovereign power; or (3) by conventional social code, i.e. she
or he is assigned/takes the role of a submissive inferior. I take the political-cumsocial senses to be operative in our text. For detailed treatments of the term see
Riesener (1979), Ringgren (1984-86), and the bibliographies cited there.
13. The string, in giving the CN first place, and in repeating the grammatical
operator x with the following PN, gives stronger emphasis to the CN than does the
reverse order, and also accentuates the PN's being a member of the specified class.
For a detailed discussion see Murray, 'An Unremarked Rhetorical Marker in Biblical Hebrew Prose' (forthcoming).
14. The Chronicler's transformation of 7.5b into a negative statement (1 Chron.
17.4b) changes the underlying rhetoric quite profoundly, as part of an overall
change to the thrust of this text. See my discussion in Claim for Power (forthcoming).
15. In English we term 'rhetorical' questions such as this, where speakers are
not making an ordinary inquiry for information, where in fact they assume that they
already know the answer, that the answer is self-evident, and therefore they do not
expect the addressee actually to answer. The sheer conventionality of this designation, however, tends now to obscure for us the fact that this type of question is
5. David and Yahweh
169
is formulated as a question precisely in order to involve the addressee,

to exert immediate psychological pressure on him to reject the proposition along with the speaker. It further vividly expresses the
speaker's surprise that the proposition implied in the question could
ever have been entertained in the first place. Moreover, it serves as a
strong combative statement of topic for a more extended dispute. David
is left in no doubt as to Yahweh's attitude to the proposition implied in
the question, and is clearly under rhetorical pressure to see the matter
the same way. This pressure is increased by the disputatory argumentation in vv. 6-7, to which the rhetorical question in 5b acts as
introduction.
A telling compactness of utterance is its second feature. The proposition implied in the question is quite obviously the proposition which
has been obliquely hinted at in vv. 2-3, first by David, and then by
Nathan. Yahweh abruptly brings an end to this conspiracy of indirection between king and prophet. His curt opening question, in articulating for the first time in the text the nub of David's project,
uncompromisingly disparages it. This lapidary utterance derives much
of its impact from its terse dismissal of the preceding indirection, and
from its brutal contradiction of the perfunctory divine approval
accorded an unstated royal initiative. That the very first words uttered
by Nathan as Yahweh's messenger to 'my servant, David' should so
comprehensively confound the last (and only) words uttered by 'Nathan
the prophet' to 'the king' is irony indeed.
Then thirdly, the particular rhetorical shaping of 5b ('is it that you
will build me a settled houseT; TQefr rra ^ ran HH^H) is well
adapted to its role as a topic sentence to the whole of Yahweh's discourse. For in biblical Hebrew prose most positional stress falls on the
the first and the last units in any utterance, ranked one and two in that
order. Thus in 5b 'is it that you' (nnîl) is positionally the most stressed
unit, a rhetorical emphasis magnified here by the use of the syntactically otiose pronoun. Then 'settled house' (TU^Sh n^D) at the end of the
utterance is the next most stressed speech unit.16 By comparison 'will
employed precisely because it is rhetorically forceful. I have attempted to convey
the degrees of emphasis in the English translation by the use of bold italics for the
primary stress on 'you', and ordinary italics for the secondary stress on 'settled
house'. See the ensuing discussion.
16. Within the utterance 5b, I consider nnKH one speech unit, since (a) the interrogative i"l as proclitic goes closely with the word to which it is joined; (b) the ilHK
170
build me' (^ noi) is quite unstressed, with 'me' (enclitic <|17), right in
the middle of the utterance, being the least stressed element of all.17
Hence this particular structure makes salient two questions: (1) who is
to build a house? and (2) what sort of a house will they build? The two
questions are interdependent, since what will be built depends on who
is doing the building. David can expect that, as his speech develops,
Yahweh will explicate these issues. But already from this brusque
opening utterance he can have no doubt that, as Yahweh envisages the
activity of building, he David is repudiated as builder, and that a house
as syntactically otiose, is relatively independent of the following verb. IVD
TQ2J1?, on the other hand, I take as one speech unit, because the TOSh is so much a
qualifier of rP3 as to constitute one unit with JTD. The expression TQtZJ1? JTD in 5b
is shown to be logico-syntactically analogous to DTIN ITD in 7b by the important
rhetorical parallelism of 7b to 5b noted below, 175, and see Figure 24, p. 224.
17. Thus I cannot agree with McCarter that ^ is 'a second emphatic pronoun in
v. 5b' (1984: 198). He argues this by maintaining that ^ is grammatically otiose
beside the first person suffix in TQ2?'?, and thus 'is unnecessary except as an
emphatic reinforcement of the first-person pronoun' [sic\] (1984: 198). Three points
can be made against this claim: (1) The most common way to stress pronominal
reference in Hebrew is to append the corresponding free-standing pronominal form
after the suffixed form: cf. 1 Kgs 1.26; Jer. 27.7b; Hag. 1.4; GKC 135g. A telling
example in relation to 2 Sam. 7.5b is Josh. 23.9b, where the emphasizing freestanding form DDK has been thrown forward from the usual position, i.e. following
its corresponding suffixed form DDÊJD, to the more emphatic first position in its
clause, to avoid its falling in the weak middle position in the utterance. In view of
these considerations it is difficult to see how "><7, falling in the least-stressed part of
the utterance 2 Sam. 7.5b, can function as 'emphatic reinforcement' for the pronominal reference in TQCD1?. (2) There is nothing equivalent to TQ2J1? in 1 Ibp, so
the second person pronominal anaphora of ~[^ there has nothing else within its
utterance for it to reinforce (or indeed to reinforce it), in the way McCarter alleges
^ does to TQ2J'? in 5b. Yet for McCarter llbp is the corresponding limb to 5b in
the overarching rhetorical structure 'not you me (5b), but I you (llbp)'. (3) With
regard to McCarter's claim, as part of his case for its reinforcing TO^h, that ^ in
^ nnn is otiose, it should be noted that three out of four other expressions in our
text directly related to ^ nnn in 5b, i.e. ^ Drra 7b, ~p nn 27ap, and the equivalent ~[t? ndiT llbp, all have a corresponding suffixed form of *p in the same
enclitic position. This evidence would indicate that we have here a conventionally
petrified form of locution, and thus that the **? in "**? nD3D 5b is not there in order to
reinforce TOtf^. The one notable exception is 13a, where, while there is an equivalent to TQtZJ1?, i.e. "'QIZJ1?, there is no equivalent ^ with H3D\ But 13a, as we shall see
in detail (see p. refs. in n. 2 above), cuts across the whole rhetoric of Yahweh's
speech.
5. David and Yahweh
171
of the kind he had in mind for Yahweh is rejected from the outset.
The first stage in the development of Yahweh's discourse is comprised by vv. 6-7. This segment is demarcated in the text by 'for' ("O) at
the beginning of v. 6, and by 'and now' (iin^l) at the beginning of v. 8.
The "O links this segment closely to the utterance of 5b, as providing a
grounding for the negative assertion implied by 5b. The nni?l signals
that the new segment beginning in v. 8 takes the discourse a stage further,18 thus also indicating that the discourse function initiated by "O in
v. 6 is complete at the end of v. 7.
Verses 6-7 spell out two grounds for rejecting David's initiative.
First, Yahweh affirms in v. 6 that, from the start of his relations with
Israel to the moment of speaking (6a|3y), he has never been 'installed'
in a 'house', that is, a fixed shrine (1732 TDCr $h> 6aa), but has always
'moved around' in a 'tent-dwelling' (pttol *?nta ~[^nnQ JTnKl 6b).19
Within the hendiadys 'tent-dwelling' (pCJQl ^HK), polemically opposed
to David's 'tent-skins' (niTT 2b[5), Yahweh incorporates both his contrary sense of the housing's adequacy as shelter (pCJQ) and the value he
sets on its mobility (^HK). Then, second, in v. 7 he follows this up with
the coup de grace so to speak of his argument for rejecting David's initiative. In effect, he challenges David to cite any word he (Yahweh)
ever uttered (TI~Q1 ~Q~in 7aa) in all the time of his moving around
among all the Israelites, castigating their failure to build him a house of
cedar.
Verse 6 gives rhetorical emphasis to two counterbalanced assertions,
a categorical negative (6aa), and a categorical affirmative (6b), by
locating them in the positions of greater stress in the utterance, the
beginning and the end. Between them is a temporal expression which
applies both assertions to a past state of affairs that still obtains at the
time of speaking (6apy). With its starting point the deliverance from
Egypt, 6afty comprehends the whole of Yahweh's dealings with the
18. That v. 8 is a new stage in the discourse is further marked by the repetition
of formulae identifying what follows as a divine oracle.
19. We are here concerned with the ideological rhetoric of these words, not with
what historical reality may lie behind them. But any attempt to consider the latter
must reckon with the former. Thus the overriding argumentative purpose here
engenders a stark contraposing of mutually exclusive opposites, i.e. ^n/"|^nnn to
the rejected m/D2T. Such a rhetoric would be ruined by Yahweh's making exceptions, or admitting such contrary instances as his temple (^STI) at Shiloh (1 Sam.
1.9b,3.3b).
172
Israelites, a point sufficiently material to his argument to merit reiterating in other terms in 7a.
6aa and 6b build their polar negative versus affirmative rhetoric on
three features. The most obvious is the correlated sets of lexemic oppositions 'be settled/installed' versus 'move around' (3CT versus f^nnn),
and 'house/temple' versus 'tent-shrine' (fTO versus p2JQl ^HK). Thus
David's idea of ITU for Yahweh is stigmatized as intent on tying and
confining Yahweh to a permanently located dwelling, contrary to the
freedom of all his previous dealings with Israel. Complementary to this
lexemic polarization is, second, the syntactic opposition of the periphrastic past continuous 'I was always moving around' (f^nnQ rpntfl)
to the punctiliar negated simple past 'I never settled' (TQ2T K1?). The
powerful 'always.. .never' contrast is made more salient by this use of
the periphrastic form, a usage infrequent in biblical Hebrew. The third
feature is the consequent marked contrast between the rhetorical
weightiness of the assertion (6b), with its periphrastic verb and hendiadys (pEJQDl ^HIO), and the curt peremptoriness of the denial (6aai).
Following the forceful negative-affirmative grounding of his position
in v. 6, Yahweh ends the first segment of his argument in v. 7 as he
began it, with another rhetorical question compelling assent to its
implied negative. The question20 is in fact double, with a second question (7b) logically and syntactically subordinated to the first (7a), but
given a position of prominence at the end of the utterance. Yahweh
begins with a heightened repetition ('in all the time I moved around
among all21 the Israelites', "wiSP 'B ^DH TO^nnn 1B? ^DH 7aa) of
what in 6b was the 'new', using it now in 7a as the 'given'22 for the
next stage of the argument. Hence the negative proposition implicated
20. Since the mark of interrogation n is prefixed to the principal term of the
question ~Q1 7aci3, that v. 7 is a question only becomes evident part-way through
the utterance.
21. It should be noted how this repetition of "?D, 'all', heightens the categoricalness in this reiteration of the gist of 6b in 7aot. My suggested reading ^DQ in 7aa
thus, "WltZT 'CD32J ^DQ "NIK DK (see on this below), would further strengthen this
element in the rhetoric of v. 7.
22. 'Given-new' (see Glossary) is now standard terminology in linguistic study
of discourse. Although 'topic-comment' (see Glossary) is often used as equivalent,
I prefer to use the former of the more micro-level relationship between utterances
(clauses, sentences), and the latter of the more macro-level relationships within
segments of discourse (paragraphs, episodes, scenes).
5. David and Yahweh
173
in the question proper ('was there ever a word I spoke...', ~Qin

...TTQ1 7aa) is governed by the same time span as 6a|3, i.e. from the
start of his relationship with Israel to the time of speaking:23 all of that
time, Yahweh stresses here to David, he was constantly on the move
among all his people.
The question proper is, as I have said, a double one. First let us look
more closely at the structure of the superordinated question (7a). Nounverb inversion results in the question particle being attached to the
noun, thus making the point at issue a particular word of Yahweh: 'was
there ever a (prophetic) word I spoke... saying...' (...TTQ1 "Q~in
. .."'IfiK'?).24 This word is purely hypothetical, since the point of Yahweh's question is that he never in fact uttered such a word. But in the
context as defined by Yahweh (6a[5, 7aa) the question makes a sally at
David, a target made clearer still by the particular form of the hypothetical word (to which we shall come in a moment). The initial irony is
that, here and now Yahweh is uttering a prophetic word to David about
not building a house (5b-7), a word which has been provoked precisely
because David has presumed to plan such a house in the absence of a
divine word! Quite unambiguously, then, Yahweh stigmatizes Nathan's
earlier response to David (3a0b) as not a divine word.
Hence, when the following clause ('one of/from the tribes of Israel',
^m&T 'entf inN 7aa) defines the putative recipient of this hypothetical
word, both rhetoric and pragmatics require that it refer to an individual.
Yet, as the Masoretic Hebrew text stands, its most natural construction
23. This observation places in the way of those who find behind the "CDDttJ of MT
in 7aa a reference to 'the judges' (see Ch. 2 n. 61, p. 68) an obstacle which is wellnigh insuperable. As the discussion in progress maintains, v. 7 is the coup de grace
of Yahweh's argument in vv. 6-7. Now since 6apy has already indicated that Yahweh is putting to David matters as they stand at the time of speaking, it would be
utterly ruinous of the force of his argument if the rhetorical question in v. 7 asked
only about some time in the past, as would be the case on the above view. This very
telling point may now be added to the other considerations against this view
adduced in Murray (1987a).
24. For a defence of MT's "ITT see Ch. 2 n. 60, p. 68. As an additional argument
in its favour I would draw the reader's attention to the irony inhering in this
emphasis on a "HI never hitherto spoken by Yahweh, in relation (a) to the earlier
exchange between David and Nathan; and (b) to David's insistent references in his
prayer to Yahweh's ~ITT concerning his (David's) house.
174
is 'any of the tribes of Israel'.25 Such an addressee for an oracle, while

surprising, is not in itself impossible.26 However, a problem arises from
the pragmatic interpretation of the adjectival clause (7a0) which defines
more closely the putative recipient. Uniquely in the Hebrew Bible, as
the text of 7aa(3 stands, 7a(3 predicates of an unspecified tribe or tribes
appointment by Yahweh to the task of shepherding Israel. But such a
function in Israel is otherwise in the Hebrew Bible attributed only to an
individual, or to a series of individuals,27 and never to an aggregate
entity such as a tribe. To resolve this difficulty I have elsewhere28 suggested that 'from all' (^DQ) has fallen out of 7aa thus: 'anyone from all
the tribes of Israel' (^tOGT ^1V ^DQ in DK). On this construction of
the text the hypothetical referent is not a tribe but an individual, of
whom 7a(3 may then be predicated without difficulty.
25. For other suggested constructions and emendations of MT, see Murray
(1987a: 390-91).
26. It also provides a possible referent for the plural pronominal reference of the
verb Dim in 7b.
27. In this transitive sense H^~l, 'to shepherd', is used of an individual other
than Yahweh as follows: Moses Isa. 63.11 (if singular); David 2 Sam. 5.2, Ezek.
34.23, 37.24, Ps. 78.71, 72; Davidic descendant Mic. 5.3[4]; Cyrus Isa. 44.28;
anonymous prophet Zech. 11.4, 16. run is applied to a series of individuals viewed
corporately in Isa. 63.11 (if plural); Jer. 2.8; 3.15; 10.21; 22.22; 23.1-4; 25.34-36;
50.6; Ezek. 34.1 et passim; Zech. 11.8. In most instances these series are transparently conceptual aggregates of individual non-contemporary 'shepherds of Israel',
i.e. kings of Israel and Judah viewed corporately, as, e.g., Jer. 22.22; 23.1-4, in the
context of oracles against kings Jer. 22.1-23.6. So probably Ezek. 34, Jer. 2.8 and
the remaining Jeremiah references, and Zech. 11.8, though any or all of these may
include the kings' officials and advisers along with the kings themselves. If the plural reading in Isa. 63.11 is correct, then this reference would appear to be to the
tribal elders who assist Moses (cf. Exod. 18; Num. 11.10-25). At any rate none of
the groups can be identified with a tribe.
28. For the argument in extenso see Murray (1987a). The points made there for
this suggestion remain telling, the one point standing against it is a lack of direct
textual support. However, indirect textual support may be found in the paraphrases
of the verse in 2 Sam. 5.2 ('you it is who will shepherd my people, Israel', nntf
'Wier n ^^ PIN nirin, i.e. 7.7ap referring to David); and in 1 Kgs 8.16 ('since
the day I brought up my people, Israel, from Egypt I have not chosen a city from all
the tribes of Israel... but I have chosen David [sell, from all the tribes of Israel] to
be over my people Israel', l^D'-ISOO ^tO&T n '131? PIN 'DKiJn 1I0N DVH ]Q
wicr 'oi> *?D nvrf? inn iraNi...^-^ 'ontf ^DQ Tin Tnrn; cf. 2 Sam.
7.6ap, 7, 8a(3b).
5. David and Yahweh
175
But irrespective of whether this particular textual suggestion is correct, the entire rhetoric in this segment of Yahweh's speech is clearly
targeted against David. With emphatic immediacy Yahweh's opening
utterance homed in on David ('is iiyouT, nrWT 5b). It is inconceivable
that in this concluding phase of the first stage of his argument, where he
applies the coup de grace as it were, Yahweh should deflect from his
real target to make vague thrusts at so diffuse an opponent as a tribe.
No, David is the opponent Yahweh is engaging with, and David
remains his target in the next stage of his discourse (8-9).
But before proceeding to the second phase of Yahweh's argument we
must consider the subordinated question (7b), which is how Yahweh
defines the hypothetical content of the prophetic word he never spoke.
Structured as a 'why?' (HQ^) question, it exudes irony. For as a question it mockingly represents Yahweh as impatient, as though he could
justifiably have expected the question's hypothetical addressees already
to have performed what it indicates they had not. And for what does
Yahweh represent himself as impatient? For a house of cedar! The sardonic swipe at David's exchange with Nathan in 1-3 is palpable, and
once again makes clear that all along David is the target of Yahweh's
attack. Even the plural verb (DJTn) tilts further at David's royal pretension, in that it presupposes the building of this 'cedar-house' for
Yahweh, had it been divinely authorized, would have been a joint responsibility,29 not the sole prerogative of 'the king'.
As the final words within its own utterance, 'house of cedar' (ITU
DT1K 7b) takes a position of stress. As also the last words in this
segment of Yahweh's oracle, they correspond to the similarly stressed
concluding words of Yahweh's initial utterance TQttJ1? JY3, 'house for
me to settle in' (5b). The hint of an inclusio marking out this segment
of Yahweh's speech is confirmed by the fact that 5b and 7b are each
rhetorical questions with considerable similarity in both language and
structure, as may be observed from Figure 24, p. 224 below. This formal and substantive relation between the beginning and the end of the
segment is evidence of how tightly integrated vv. 5b-7 are as a sustained attack against David.30
29. It is not crucial to my point here to determine the intended reference of the
second person plural, which is in any case left undetermined in the text.
30. The function of this inclusio as part of a more elaborate chiastic structure in
this segment will be discussed below, 5.3.1.2, p. 212.
176

Having thus thoroughly disposed of David's initiative, Yahweh's discourse moves into a new phase, signalled by the transitional particle
'and now' (iinui Sacti). More strikingly, however, the discourse level
also reverts momentarily from Yahweh's addressing David (through
Nathan) to his addressing his spokesman Nathan direct.31 Rhetorically,
this device serves a number of significant purposes. First, it formally
demarcates the first segment of Yahweh's discourse from its continuation32 in the second and third segments, as if to say 'let us now draw a
line under what has been said so far'. Then, second, it forcibly reminds
the reader of the situation which still obtains, that is, that what Yahweh
has to say was unsolicited by either prophet or king. Third, it also
allows Yahweh to reiterate, in heightened form, his definition33 of the
relationships subsisting between the participants: Yahweh himself as
author of the discourse, now assuming the special title YHWH Sebd'ot
'Yahweh of Hosts' (niN32i iTliT 8aa contrast 5a0); the addressee David,
again precisely defined by 'to my subject, to David' (m^ HUD1? 8act
cf. 5aa); and the intermediary Nathan, who receives a second set of
instructions to convey Yahweh's message to David (8aa cf. 5aa).
Clearly, the religio-political context thus set out, of a kingly Yahweh
mediating his sovereign divine word to a presumptuous underling by an
obedient prophet, is very important for understanding the remainder of
Yahweh's message.
The new element in this is the title YHWH Seba'6t (rTKOS mrr). Why
keep this title back until the reiterated oracle introduction formulae?34
Given its close association with the ark,35 in which connection the
reader has already met it in 6.2,18, one might have expected the title to
have been used already in Nathan's response to David's approach over
31. This second set of oracular formulae has widely been taken, in a purely
mechanical way, as evidence of another oracle beginning in v. 8, originally separate
from the preceding oracle in vv. 5-7. However, my discussion will demonstrate just
how organically related are all three segments of Yahweh's speech: see especially
5.3.2 below.
32. That Yahweh's discourse (5b-16) is both logically continuous and rhetorically cohesive, pace Rost (1926: 68-72 = 1965: 178-82 = 1982: 52-55) and his
numerous epigoni, my discussion will amply demonstrate.
33. Which is to say the definition the author privileges by putting it into the
mouth of Yahweh.
34. miT tout court was used in the first set in 5ap.
35. On this see on 2 Sam. 6.2 in 4.2.1, pp. 119-20, with nn. 25-27.
5. David and Yahweh
111
rehousing the ark (7.3), or at any rate by Yahweh himself in the first
oracle introduction (7.4). But by reserving his title as victorious divine
warrior-king to this second stage of his discourse Yahweh brings out
the full irony of David's attempts to manipulate this God through control of the ark. For the means of that control Yahweh has already utterly
repudiated (5b-7). The arrogance of David's pretension to such control
he will now thoroughly expose (8-1 la).
That it is Yahweh's sovereign initiative which has reigned supreme
in all his relations with David and with Israel is the main burden of the
second segment of Yahweh's speech. The point is forcefully made right
from the opening words, 7 it was who took you' with their emphasizing, grammatically otiose, first person pronoun ("pnnp1? ""38 8ap).36
Rhetorically, this pronoun has both anaphora and kataphora. Its anaphora is most immediately to the title YHWH Seba'ot with which it is
contiguous. Hence the pronoun identifies this sovereign God of the ark
as the dominating subject of this segment, a God who, far from being
subjected to David's control, himself ordered and directed David's
career from its humblest beginnings to its exalted heights (8a[5-9). A
more distant but no less potent anaphora is to the pronoun "you" (5b).
Rhetorically the anaphora works through the respective positions of the
pronouns in their utterances, as well as through their being syntactically
marked: the disparaged 'you' (interrogative n with otiose HDK 5b) is the
very first word in the first segment of Yahweh's speech, just as this
vigorously affirmed 7' (otiose "OK 8apJ) is here in the second. Through
these pronouns Yahweh contraposes his sovereign prerogative over
David as YHWH Sebd'ot, incontrovertibly demonstrated in the events of
8a(3-9, against David's royal pretension to prerogative over Yahweh,
unanswerably refuted by the non-events of 6-7.
Kataphorically, the pronoun introduces a whole series of first person
verbs with Yahweh as subject, running through to lOaa. Here it is of
the essence that the actions which Yahweh enumerates are his in particular.37 Now reference to his own actions is not new to Yahweh's discourse, since even in its first segment (5b-7) his action, or the
significant lack of it, dominates. But in the first segment the speaker
36. Note the expression of the pronominal object of the verb as an unstressed
enclitic suffix ("pnnp'?), rather than as an independent form, susceptible to rhetorical stress.
37. I take the rhetorical force of the emphatic ""3K to extend beyond the first verb
"[Trip1? to all the ensuing first person verbs in the series, right up to vniXDDT in lOaa.
178
does not, in the way that he now does in 8ap, make such a point of its
being his action.38 This difference arises from a change of focus
between the two segments in citing Yahweh's action. In the first segment the focus was on the nature of Yahweh's action, or the lack of it,
as it affected himself and his own concerns. Here in the second Yahweh
stresses how his actions have always determined and will continue to
determine the destiny of David, and through him, the destiny of his
people, Israel.
Yahweh opens his extended recital of divine actions (8a(3-10aa), with
a topic statement that summarizes David's career as 'taken by Yahweh
from being a follower of sheep to becoming leader of Yahweh's
people' (8af3yb). In the semantic contrast between 'behind, following'
("intf) and 'one in front, leader' (T3J) Yahweh dramatizes the change
wrought by his intervention. One catches also in 'I it was who took you
from the sheepcote' (m]n ]Q "jTinp^ ^ft) a certain ironic play on Yahweh's opening, 'is it that you will build me a settled houseT (ilfl^n
TQ2J1? fTQ ^ nnn 5b): it is Yahweh who has made David upwardly
mobile (cf. 'everywhere you went', fD^n "ICON 'PD!} 9aa), not David
who will make Yahweh ostentatiously settled!
But Yahweh's advancement of David is directed towards Yahweh's
people: Yahweh took David from the humble obscurity of a shepherd
of sheep 'to become leader over my people, over Israel' (?V 1^] DTH^
'WICT ^ âtf 8b). However beneficial to David Yahweh's actions enumerated in v. 9, they were not set in train with his individual advancement solely in view, but to achieve through him the welfare of
Yahweh's people. Once again Yahweh is refuting David out of his own
mouth. In 6.21 David had used an equivalent form of words to trump
Michal playing her regal suit. But in that context, where David was
solely concerned with his own royal estate (6.21-22), it was not said as
due acknowledgment of Yahweh's sovereign initiative in and determination of his career, nor with any adequate sense of David's obligation
to Yahweh's people.39 But now Yahweh will leave David in no doubt
38. I have sufficiently demonstrated above (see n. 17) that, contrary to the claim
of McCarter (1984: 198), no stress falls on the pronominal reference to the speaker
in 5b. Had this emphasis been desiderated in vv. 5b-7, one would have expected
6aa to have read IT32 TOP tib ^ O. Thus, far from '] in 8a(3 'resuming] the
stress on "me" in v. 5' (1984: 198), it introduces this stress for the first time into the
discourse.
39. See my reading of 6.21-22 in 4.2.3, pp. 141-44.
5. David and Yahweh
179
about what he always intended in making him ndgid over his people,
Israel.
Hitherto in 2 Samuel 7 Yahweh's view of David's position has been
presented in terms of the relationship David sustains to Yahweh, that is,
'my subject, David' (~n~I "Hit!? 5ace, 8aa). Now Yahweh defines David's
position as it relates to Israel: 'leader over my people, over Israel'
(^tn&T ^tf 'DU ^tf ~n] 8b). There are two points to be noted about this
phrase. First, the title ndgid 'leader' for David should be understood, on
the one hand, as consonant with and complementary to the designation
'my subject, David' ("111 HDU), but on the other hand, as therefore deliberately contrastive to his earlier designation as 'the king' ("[^Qil) tout
court. Yahweh intends David to play a crucial role in relation to Yahweh's people Israel, but in that role there is no place for the self-referring and arbitrary imperiousness of melek, already evident in 2 Sam.
6.1-7.3. As ndgid,40 David is Yahweh's servant to Yahweh's people,
the one who, under Yahweh, is to lead Yahweh's people into the future
Yahweh has mapped out for them.
Then, second, Yahweh uses the syntactical string x-CN x-PN, which
makes more salient the relationship the CN predicates of the PN, in
order to define the sphere of David's ndgid-ship as 'over my people,
over Israel' (8bp). The syntactical emphasis is here further heightened
by the expression's stressed position at the end of the utterance. In this
way Yahweh gives prominence to two points fundamental to the further
development of his discourse: (1) Israel is not David's kingdom, the
subjects of his sovereignty, but Yahweh's people, the objects of his
care and concern; (2) therefore all Yahweh does for David is done with
a view to Israel's benefit.
Having thus in Saftyb summarized the purpose of David's exaltation,
in v. 9 Yahweh stresses to David his constant involvement in his career.
There is a double level of irony in the first clause of the three 'I was
with you wherever you went' (fD^n ~)&N 'PDD ~|QJJ iTTIKI 9aa), which
combines polemically two phrases already used in the text. The first
part ('I was with you', "[Qtf rpntf")) parodies, in the mouth of Nathan as
Yahweh's spokesman, the words 'the king' had all but put into the
mouth of Nathan as his court prophet ('for Yahweh is/will be with
you', "[Q# miT "O 3b). In thereby according the divine imprimatur to
40. Thus it is essential to understanding the message of this text that ~n] should
not be taken more or less as a mere synonym for ~[^Q: on this see in detail Ch. 8
below.
180
the king's project that assurance was utterly misconceived (so Yahweh
in 5b-7). Now, however, Yahweh takes the same phrase to inform 'my
subject, David' that all along Yahweh had indeed been with him, not to
smooth his way to the pretensions of melek-ship, but to direct his path
to the duties of ndgid-ship over Yahweh's people.
The second phrase ('wherever you went'; DD^n "KZJK ^D3 9aa)
echoes one ('everywhere I moved around'; TO^nnn "ICDK ^D3 7aa)
which was a key element in Yahweh's refutation of David's implied
argument in favour of his projected house for Yahweh. There Yahweh's
sovereign freedom to move around (cf. also "[^nnQ rpriK 6ba) was
convincingly counterposed to the confining fixity of abode David's
initiative sought to impose upon him. Here the constant forward progress41 of David's career is, ironically, a mark of Yahweh's initiative
for David.
The assertion that Yahweh has removed before David every opponent (9a[3) offers a pertinent instance of the very general claim made in
9aa. Yahweh implicitly refers David back to the victories over the
Philistines (5.17-25), forcibly reminding him that these decisive successes were achieved by his, Yahweh's, active involvement. But
meanwhile, out of this sedulous and apparently tractable divine support,
David's royal pretensions had burgeoned (6.1-7.3). Hence Yahweh
here sets this reminder of support into a context (8act-10) which spells
out how these victories were but part of a much wider aim in making
David nagid over his people, Israel.
Yahweh's exposition of his active involvement with David is carried
forward in 9b, but with a notable change of syntax. So far Yahweh's
recital of his acts in establishing David's nagid-ship has linked two
wayyiqtol verb forms to an initial qatal form (nrTDNI.. .iTi"lNl.. ."[TOp*?
8ap, 9a). In accord with standard biblical Hebrew prose syntax, this is a
chain of narrative preterites, representing these three acts as already
accomplished facts at the time of speaking. But now in 9b the recital is
directly continued with the different verb form \veqdtal (TIC?#1), which
initiates an unbroken series of four such forms (9b-10aa). This series is
then brought to an end syntactically with the change to two coordinate
intransitive third person forms (T3T 8*71, pEh lOa) involving change of
subject. The second of the two, as a negated verb, becomes a yiqtol
41. It is probably this sense of linear progress towards a goal which dictates use
of the qal ro^n here, rather than of the hithpael appropriate to the sense of a more
random moving about in 7aa.
5. David and Yahweh
181
form with standard future reference, a temporal reference patently continued by the negated yiqtol in lOb. Why this notable change in syntactic flow between 8a(5-9a and 9b-10a? What is the logico-temporal
relation of the verbs in 9b-10a, both with the unambiguously preterite
series that precedes them, and the clearly future forms in 10a(3b?42
To regard this series of weqdtal forms in 9b-10a merely as continuing
the preceding preterites43 is unwarranted. For, unless the change in
syntax signals a change in point of view, it is both linguistically misleading, and rhetorically pointless. To be perspicuous to the reader as
preterites of a different kind, the change would surely need to be
marked in some other way, a marking signally absent in a text which
continues to coordinate its verbs with we (1). Otherwise the standard
syntax of biblical Hebrew prose, whereby an otherwise unmarked
switch to weqdtal forms would be understood as a change to some kind
of future predication, will prevail. Further in favour of this latter construction are that, on the one hand, nothing pragmatic in 9b-10aa
demands that the verbs there be given definite past reference, and that,
on the other, at the end of the series, in the negated yiqtol verbs of
lOafiba, future reference is quite unambiguous. Thus I would maintain
that there can be little doubt about the future reference of the series'
predications.
But such temporal referencing requires a point of reference: so the
decisive question is, the verbs in 9b-10a are future in relation to what?
To explain this, a brief digression is necessary. English, which has a
42. For my earlier discussion of the implication of the weqdtal verbs here, see
Murray (1990: 318-19).
43. So, for example, Rost (1926: 59-60 = 1965: 170-71 = 1982: 44-45), and
Loretz (1961: 294-96). Besides a doubtful appeal, made by both, to analogy with
alleged instances of preterite weqatal forms elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, Rost
relies mainly on two claims: (1) that the general content in 8-1 la demands past reference for these verbs; (2) that the formal contrast between Yahweh's past action in
8-1 la and his future action in 1 lb-16 demands past reference for all verbs in 8-1 la.
While I fully accept that such a past-future contrast in general is basic to the
rhetoric of our text, it does not follow from this rhetorical strategy that everything
leading up to 1 lb-16 must be in the speaker's/hearer's past, and everything in 1 lb16 in their future. At most, what is demanded by this rhetoric is that the heart of
what is expounded in 1 lb-16 be future in relation to the heart of what is expounded
in 8-1 la. On my understanding of 9b-10ap\ this relationship is fully preserved.
What Rost's explanation still signally fails to do, however, is to account for the
abrupt, and on his understanding unnecessary, change to weqatal forms in 9b-10a.
182
strongly time-demarcated verb tense system, allows a speaker/writer to

indicate future-in-the-past, that is, to mark one now-past event as, at a
given reference point in the past, future in relation to another. This
sophisticated grammatico-semantic device allows a double point of reference: (1) the speaker's/writer's present, in relation to which both
events are past; and (2) a given past point in time, in relation to which
the one event is past, the other future. The point of this here is that,
given such flexibility of time reference within a verb system based on
strong tense demarcations, similar or greater flexibility of time reference ought to be possible within a verb system by common consent not
so definitively based on tense demarcations, namely, that of biblical
Hebrew prose.
Thus, to return to the question at hand, I would maintain that the
series of actions predicated by the weqdtal forms in 9b-10acc are indicated as future relative to the predications made by the preceding series
of preterites. But, contrary to my foregoing reference to English, they
carry no specification about their relation to the time of speaking. In
other words, the actions specified by these verbs (9b-10aa) are not
definitely located in the speaker's (or hearer's) past, present, or future,
but may variously be any, or all, of these. They are represented only as
consequent upon and ensuing from actions definitely fixed in the
speaker's/hearer's past by the preterite series (8ap-9a). In effect this is
to set the two series of actions in a cause-effect relationship, whereby
the actions in 9b-10aa are the intended results of those in 8ap-9a.44 This
is the point Yahweh makes to David when changing from wayyiqtol to
weqatal forms in 9b-10aa.
Hence Yahweh, in turning David from humble shepherd (8af3y) into
all-conquering hero (9a), has been working first towards David's exaltation among the great (9b). This again has an ironic ring within our
stretch of text, given how we have seen David assiduously scheming to
the same end. Indeed, both his last word to Michal (!"I~QDN 'let me get
myself honour' 6.22bp) and his opening gambit to Nathan (DET 'D3N
...1 DT1K rrm, 'I am settled in a house of cedar but...' 7.2ayb)
revolve around what will bring him honour as melek. But, for Yahweh,
44. This understanding is accordingly reflected in my rendering of 7.9b-10aa in
my translation in Ch. 2 above. I agree with L. Schmidt that 'Das Perfekt mit waw in
9b kann nur explizierend verstanden werden' (1970: 147 my emphasis: 'the perfect
with waw in 9b can only be understood as explicatory'), but disagree that its close
connection with 9a necessarily fixes its reference to the definite past.
5. David and Yahweh
183
David's exaltation is merely a link in the unbroken chain of events

which lead from the choosing of David as ndgid to the security of Israel
as Yahweh's people. That David's nagid-ship, then, is not primarily a
matter of his own status and success, but intimately and fundamentally
concerns the welfare of Israel, Yahweh makes clear by closely tying, in
the weqatal series, his exaltation of David (9b) with his secure
establishment of his people (lOaa).
Then second, but more importantly, Yahweh has been working
towards the goal of establishing the welfare of his people. The
unbroken series of first person verbs linked by waw running through 9lOaa, all develop Yahweh's explication of his topic statement in 8a(3b
'I it was who took you... to become leader over my people, Israel'
towards its climax in v. 10, that is, what David's nagid-ship as put into
effect by Yahweh's actions is intended to achieve for his people. Yahweh thus picks up here the marked x-CN x-PN string 'for my people,
for Israel' (^""ICT1? ""ftl^ lOaa) from his main topic statement, and
establishes this as the subtopic which lOaa-llaa then elaborates.
Through the career of David Yahweh has been working to make for his
people a 'place of safety'45 wherein he may firmly establish them
(lOaa), free from the harassment and depredation (lOapSba) which has
been their experience prior to David (1 Ob(3-1 laa).46
Yahweh concludes this segment of his speech by emphasizing how
qualitatively different from all Israel's previous experience (l$fcO
nTKZJK~Q, 'as formerly' lObp) is his series of actions in and through
David as nagid.41 So different as to inaugurate a new era that firmly
relegates to the superseded past the whole epoch since Yahweh
45. I have discussed the evidence for the particular nuance inhering in the
expression DlpQ UW, 'establish a place of safety', in Murray (1990: 314-19).
46. Against the proposal of Gelston (1972: 92-94), taken up by McCarter (1984:
202-203), to refer the third person pronominal anaphora of vnjKD]! and subsequent
verbs in v. 10 back to DlpQ = temple, not ""QD 'my people', see in detail Murray
(1990 passim).
47. Note the typological similarity to predictions of future restoration in
prophetic books, which, in addition to affirmative future verbs describing the new
state of salvation, use negated future verbs to assert that the promised future will be
different from the unhappy past in crucial ways: cf., e.g., Isa. 8.23-9.6[9.1-7]; Jer.
31.31-34; Ezek. 36.8-15; 37.15-23. This is inherent in the rhetoric of promise,
whose typical context is a present which disappoints. It is hardly to be supposed,
pace Ackroyd (1977: 77), that the period of the exile was the only time to engender
such disappointment among the ideologues of the Hebrew Bible.
184
appointed judges over Israel (1 laa), that is, since he began to organize
Israel as his people immediately following the exodus.48 A new era
that, quite unlike the superseded one, will be characterized by that
freedom from harassment by enemies that Yahweh has effected in and
for David.49 The change from third person reference to Israel in v. 10
back to second person reference to David ("pITtf..."]1? lla|3) refocuses
Yahweh's discourse upon the addressee, in ending his specific development (10-11 a) of the subtopic on the results for Israel's future of
Yahweh's actions through David.
1 lap thus harks back to 9afJ, one of the series of first person explications of Yahweh's actions for David, and through David for his people,
Israel. But it does so in the language of Ib. In its context Ib offered
some narratorial explanation for David's initiative to build a house for
Yahweh, an initiative robustly rejected by Yahweh (5b-7). Here, by
using the same expression to round off his summary of how he has
prosecuted David's career in the interests of his people, Yahweh has
thoroughly recontextualized it, from David's agenda for him to his
48. My exposition here accepts the reading with 1 (jQ1?!: for the text see above,
Ch. 2, p. 69 n. 65) but treats it as explicatory: 'as formerly, namely from the day I
appointed judges over my people Israel'. To take the 1 as coordinating is to weaken
the rhetoric, since the text thereby refers to two separate eras, but in such a way as
(1) to put into the rhetorically stronger first position a vague reference ('formerly'
nJ)C0K~a 10b(3) to an earlier era (? the Egyptian oppression) which the much later
period of David does not supersede in any meaningful sense; while (2) referring to
the actual era the period of David supersedes (1 laa) by the weak rhetoric of a lame
addition. In fact the text defines just one era (cf. 6ap above), the era since Yahweh
appointed judges over his people after their deliverance from Egypt, Exod. 18.2122, 25-26; Deut. 1.16. The communis opinio that takes D'CDStO here to refer to 'the
judges' so denominated in Judg. 2.16-19 is considerably less likely. For one thing,
this is a highly restricted usage in the Hebrew Bible: outside that passage the term
OS2J has this specialized reference with fair certainty in only two other texts, 2 Kgs
23.22; Ruth 1.1; and with reasonable probability in one other, 1 Chron. 17.6.
Otherwise, and far more frequently, the term refers to mostly anonymous officials
who apply Yahweh's laws to his people. Then, second, the identity in idiom (m^
D'taSKJ) between Deut. 1.16a and our present passage points very strongly to a similarity of reference, i.e. to the officials Moses first appointed at Sinai/Horeb. Finally,
the era as defined by my reading of 7.10bp-l laa thus agrees with that previously
defined by Yahweh in 6ap above.
49. The \veqdtal TUTDm here is a perfective, as the Masoretic accentuation indicates, expressing as a durative the results of the action narrated by the preterite
wayyiqtol form nn"DKl in 9ap.
5. David and Yahweh
185
agenda for David and Israel. Then, in a telling parody of vv. 1-2, he
launches straight from asserting this into proclaiming his countervailing
initiative, his making a house for David (1 Ib).
Yahweh strikingly demarcates this new phase of his discourse by a performative statement (lib), in which he abruptly50 changes self-reference from the expected first person forms, which have so far prevailed
from 5b to lla^, to third person forms.51 But this style of reference
extends no further than the terse utterance (llb(3) governed by the performative verb: the remainder of Yahweh's speech (12-16) reverts to
first person self-reference. Why this abrupt and quite unexpected
change to third person self-reference? Two elements of pragmaticscum-poetics are involved. First, the extra processing effort the utterance
imposes on the addressee/reader, in order to realize that it refers to the
same pragmatic subject as the first person verbs in 8a(3-10aa,lla, produces a rhetorically powerful effect of defamiliarization. That is to say,
by referring to himself as though talking about another, Yahweh makes
this utterance stand out from the rest of his discourse, forcing his auditor to give it greater attention. Then second, the third person stylization of the utterance makes it formal, ceremonial. This solemnity lends
an impressive, legal-sounding, quality to Yahweh's performative
statement.52
50. Many readers have found this abruptness problematical. But assuming,
unless there is pressing evidence to the contrary, the principle of text cohesion, this
reader takes l i b as an instance of unusual third person self-reference, for striking
rhetorical emphasis, by the voice which has been speaking in the text since 5b, and
carries on speaking until 16. A possible alternative construction, namely that
Nathan, as Yahweh's spokesman to David, momentarily resumes his own persona
in making this utterance is in no (other) way signalled by the text. Rost (1926: 5759 = 1965: 168-70 = 1982: 43-44) explains l i b as a fragment from a supposed
original third person oracle, which has managed to survive, intact, some nine stages
of redaction suffered by 2 Sam. 7, none of which otherwise maintained its third
person style.
51. Compare above Ch. 2 n. 68, p. 70, and the passages cited there. Austin's
analysis, although it allowed for (second and) third person performatives, only
considers passive forms (1962: 57), and evidently did not envisage the situation
where a speaker uses third person forms in self-reference.
52. Austin says of his passive (second and) third person performatives 'this type
is usually found on formal or legal occasions; and it is characteristic of it that, in
186
The quasi-legal formality of Yahweh's words is further emphasized

by another unexpected departure from normal prose syntax within this
short utterance. The second verb in lib ('will make', i"I2?JT llbp),
instead of employing pronominal anaphora to the verb subject 'Yahweh' already stated in llba, repeats the name 'Yahweh' as subject
specifier within the space of a mere five words. Furthermore, subjectobject inversion in 1 Ibp sends this repeated specifier (Yahweh) to the
end of the sentence, thus adding to the rhetorical impact made by its
striking repetition that of positional stress also.53 Clearly, then, Yahweh
marks this utterance, in every way possible within its brevity, with all
the authority that inheres in his personal divine prerogative.
Yahweh makes this particular utterance thus stand out from its
immediate context, because the role it plays within his discourse is pivotal. In fact, 1 Ibp is so formulated as to bear a quite particular relation
ship to Yahweh's opening utterance in 5b, as the following tabulation
shows (Figure 15):54
Figure 15: Chiastic Parallelism between 2 Sam. 7.5b and 7.1 Ibp
Four features in this relationship should be noted. First, the very close
verbal-semantic similarity in the two utterances establishes an immediate clear link: verbally, llbp reinvokes 5b, after 8-1 la had carried
Yahweh's discourse on to a topic with no immediate connection. But,
second, the major terms in each utterance are rhetorically counterposed
in a chiasm. Thus the two instances of 'house' (ITD), and the pair of
corresponding terms 'you' (nriN) and 'Yahweh' (mil1'), are set at the
opposite ends of their respective utterances. Even the less stressed
writing at least, the word "hereby" is often and perhaps always to be inserted'
(1962: 57).
53. For the reading of the text, see above Ch. 2 n. 68, p. 70.
54. The pidgin English used in the tabulation results from following the Hebrew
word order, so as to illustrate in the translation as precisely as possible the shape of
the utterances in Hebrew.
5. David and Yahweh
187
middle terms,55 the verbs, are differentiated: 'will make' (nfoJT lib(3) as
against 'will build' (n]3fl 5b). Then, third, the resultant strong first
place stress56 given ST3 'house' in llb(3 reinforces the rhetorical
salience it has as the verbal object thrown forward of the verb and its
subject. With such strong rhetorical marking Yahweh re-establishes
'house' as the topic of his discourse. Finally, 1 lb(3 is counterposed to
5b also as an illocutionary act: whereas 5b was a robustly polemical
question implying a negative assertion, llbp is a solemn and measured
affirmation. Thus operating in conceit, these four features make 1 Ibp a
powerful counter-analogue of 5b, and strongly suggest that it is Yahweh's answer to David's initiative, repudiated by him in 5b-7.
In its immediate context, however, the lead term in llbp, 'house'
(ITU), is new. For it had been as it were dismissed the field of discourse
by Yahweh in 5b-7, and in SafS-lla Yahweh engaged with matters
which had no immediate link with ITU. Its reappearance in llbp is
unexpected, hence its considerable rhetorical prominence. Yet what
Yahweh thereby establishes in 1 Ibp as the topic for the continuation of
his discourse is his undertaking to make a house for David. But, since
hitherto in Yahweh's discourse 'house' has referred only to a physical
shelter, on immediate hearing Yahweh appears in llb(3 to be promising
David what David already has (cf. 2ay). The addressee must therefore
assume that his puzzlement will be dispelled by ensuing comment on
this re-established topic ITU Furthermore, on the principle of cohesiveness, he is also likely to anticipate that this comment will go towards
relating this renewed topic to Yahweh's preceding exposition of
David's career as nagid over Israel (8-11 a).
But in fact, even given the brevity of this utterance, Yahweh has
already given some hint that ITD here may not be equivalent to ITU earlier in the text. Quite striking is the unexpectedly different verb with
ITU, not the conventional n]T, 'will build', so far used by Yahweh in
55. I note again that no special rhetorical emphasis is given Y?, 'you', in 1 lb(i
just as none was given <|17, 'me', in 5b: both fall in the unstressed middle. Thus,
while in discourse logic ^ is opposed to"]"?, this opposition is merely a subsidiary
entailment of contraposing the builders and the kind of house they will build, and
need not be marked rhetorically.
56. Strictly it is the conjunction "O, 'that', that is in first position in the unit I
designate 1 lb(3, in accordance with my convention of dividing the verses according
to the Masoretic punctuation. However, the conjunction, as a mere link-word
between 'Yahweh hereby announces' (~nm 1 Iba) and the notionally distinct utterance beginning with 'a house' (ITU 1 Ibf}), clearly carries no particular stress.
188
5b and 7b above, but the infrequently found nfolP, 'will make'.57

Admittedly, the expression mi n&l?, 'make a house', can be used literally of a physical building, as 1 Kgs 7.8; 1 Chron. 15.1 show. But the
other four instances58 of its use in the Hebrew Bible all involve ITQ in
the figurative sense, 'extended family, dynasty'. Thus the verb HCW
here itself underlines the contrariety of llb{3 to 5b, and stimulates
expectation about what Yahweh's ensuing comment will reveal about
his initiative for David, announced so intriguingly in 1 Ibp.
Any puzzlement on David's part about the kind of house Yahweh
intends to make him is quickly dispelled by v. 12. First, in unambiguous parallel phrases (12aa), Yahweh postpones ('it will be when', iTm
"O) its making to beyond the death of David. Consequently, in now
extending into the indefinite future his series of actions in and through
David as catalogued in 8-1 la, Yahweh first spells out for David that the
house he will make is not something David himself will enjoy directly.
Then Yahweh goes on to relate the promise specifically to David's offspring, whom he will exaltwhen David is dead and gone (12apy)! By
thus immediately and redundantly ('after you', "pint* 12a|3) picking up
on the parallel phrases in 12aa, Yahweh is making quite a point to
David that his promise concerns a future beyond David's lifetime. With
the final clause of v. 12 Yahweh completes his initial definition of the
house he will make for David: the divinely established royal rule of his
offspring (12b). Thus the 'house' promised in llbp is the continuation
in rulership of David's 'offspring' (~p~)T).
But this term 'your offspring' ("]#")?) is ambiguous in biblical Hebrew, being susceptible of either single59 or collective60 reference. Here
57. See Ch. 2 n. 69, pp. 70-71, for a defence of the reading ntoir.
58. The combination JT3 H3D, 'to build a house', on the other hand, occurs
scores of times in the Hebrew Bible in many independent contexts, whereas the
combination IT3 new? occurs only six times (literal: 1 Kgs 7.8 JT3; 1 Chron. 15.1
D^nu; figurative: Exod. 1.21; 1 Sam. 25.28; 2 Sam. 7.11; 1 Kgs 2.24 all singular), of
which 1 Sam. 25.28 and 1 Kgs 2.24 are almost certainly dependent on 2 Sam. 7.11.
59. Genesis 4.25 and 1 Sam. 1.11 are instances of individual reference: cf. Mettinger(1976:53).
60. The patriarchal promises in Genesis are a well-known set of instances of
collective reference: cf., e.g., Gen. 15.5; 22.17; 26.4, where in each case the simile(s) of incalculable number guarantee(s) it. Moreover, in 22.17a immediately following the similes, 17b uses a singular verb and singular pronominal anaphora to
"firiT, 'your offspring', just as our context in 2 Sam. 7.12-15 consistently uses singular anaphors to ~p"lT in 7.12.
5. David and Yahweh
189
Yahweh further defines it, somewhat tautologically, by the clause 'who

will issue from your loins' (~pUDQ KIT "12JK 12ay). What is the purpose
of adding this expression? Is it, as some claim,61 to restrict reference of
'your offspring' to immediate descent from David, indeed, to one particular successor in the generation of his (literal) sons? While this
defining expression may indeed refer to immediate descent in the next
generation,62 examination of its usage and of the usage of equivalent
expressions in the Hebrew Bible shows that in fact they are all also
often used of descent over a number of generations.63 Hence whether
61. This has been claimed among others by Mettinger (1976: 53), and Caquot
(1994: 430), the latter maintaining that the expression 'ne s'applique qu'a un individu': on this see n. 62 below. The remarks of Eslinger on the phrase (1994: 45) are
ambiguous.
62. There are in fact no more than two instances in the Hebrew Bible: Gen. 15.4
and 2 Sam. 16.11, the two cited by Mettinger (1976: 53) and Caquot (1994: 430).
But for Gen. 15.4, see the comments in the next note.
63. In 2 Sam. 16.11 (of David's living son Absalom) the reference to a single
immediate offspring of the expression TQQ K^\ 'come from the loins of, is unambiguously defined by the context. In Gen. 15.4 (of Abraham's heir here promised),
however, the situation is ambiguous. On the one hand, the immediate contrast with
Eliezer of Damascus (PIT 4a) at first suggests singular reference for ~p#QQ KIT ~I$N
~|2TV'' Kin (4b), i.e. 'the one who will issue from your loins will be your heir'. But
then the passage continues with the promise in 15.5 that Abraham's offspring ("pIT
sing. 5b) will be as innumerable as the stars. Thus contextually the "[iHT of 5b is
parallel to the "[eh" Kin -pQQ KiT "IKJK of 4b, which it further defines and
extends, i.e. 'those who will issue from your loins will be your heirs'. The point of
the expression here is to stress that Abraham's heirs will be his own issue. But
although the preceding are the only other occurrences of the precise expression
"UQQ NiT "I2JN, there are in fact a number of other parallel expressions in the Hebrew Bible whose usage is also relevant evidence on the possible range of meaning
of "BOO K2T "HON. Thus in Isa. 48.19 the nominal form "j-UQ '$$, 'issue of vour
loins', where it is also parallel to ~|inT (sing.), is certainly plural in reference, and
almost certainly also involves lineal descendants over an indefinite number of
generations. Isaiah 39.7 = 2 Kgs 20.18 MT reads "[QQ 1N2T ~\m "paaoi, whereas
lQIsa reads ~pJ)QQ, again in a context in which plurality of reference is assured, and
reference to lineal descendants from an indefinite number of generations most
probable. The parallel expression "p^TO K2T is analogously flexible, with clear
singular reference in 1 Kgs 8.19 (a paraphrase of 2 Sam. 7.12), and equally clear
plural reference in Gen. 35.11, where an indefinite number of generations are
implied. Similarly, the earlier parallel to the latter text, Gen. 17.6, which uses the
expression ~[QQ N^\ Here, similarly to Gen. 15.4-5, Yahweh goes on in the
immediate context to use "jiriT (sing.) in parallel ("p"inN ~p~lT, 'your offspring after
you', repeatedly 17.7a, 7b, 8a), where its plural anaphors (Dmi1?, 'throughout their
190
the expression here has the more restrictive or the wider reference must
be determined contextually. Now the particular combination 'possessive adjective + offspring after + personal pronoun' (x~"H!"[N x~^~lT), as
we have it here in 'your offspring after you' ("firiK "[ITIT 12ap), occurs
some 15 times in the Hebrew Bible, outside of this text and its parallel
in 1 Chron. 17.II.64 In all instances the context makes clear that the
expression has collective reference, and in all but one65 extension over
several generations at least is equally unambiguously involved. Thus
the particular expression employed here to define 'your offspring'
clearly indicates a collective sense for the term.
But further, since v. 12 is making defining comment on 'house' in
lib, the pragmatics of context also direct the listener/reader to construe
the reference of 'your offspring after you, who will issue from your
loins' (12apy) as collective. For from this comment it has become clear
that the 'house' announced in 1 Ib must be of the metaphorical kind, the
kind which subsists by extension over generations within the same line
of descent. Hence, on the pragmatic principles of relevance and coherence, 12a(3y has similar comprehensive reference: just one successor
would make Yahweh's promise of a house a very meagre one indeed! I
will discuss further below the relation between the terms JTD, 'house',
and IT)?, 'offspring', in our text, after we have read through the whole
of the relevant context (12-16).
Given the content of v. 12, it is worth noting how its opening 'so it
will be that, when your days are fulfilled' (fiT Itto '3 rrm)66 echoes,
in future mode, the opening of v. 1, 'so it was that when the king was
installed in his house' OJT23 "J^ftn D2T "O TT1). This parallel gives resonance to the profound irony in Yahweh's words as a parody of
David's opening gambit (see Figure 16):
generations' 7a; Dilb, 'to them' 8b) again make clear its plural reference. Another
equivalent expression "JT ^^!| in Judg. 8.30 refers to plural descendants in the
same generation, and in Gen. 46.26; Exod. 1.5 to plural descendants over a number
of generations. Finally, we note that yet another parallel expression "]303 "HBO in
the version of the dynastic promise in Ps. 132.11 has unambiguous plural reference
64. The other instances are Gen. 9.9; \1.7(bis),S, 9, 10, 19; 35.12; 48.4; Exod.
28.43; Num. 25.13; Deut. 1.8; 4.37; 10.15; 1 Sam. 24.22[21].
65. The one possible exception is 1 Sam. 24.22[21], where Saul presses David
to swear to spare 'my descendants after me'. Here the limitation of reference is the
purely pragmatic one of the number of Saulide generations likely to appear during
David's lifetime.
66. For the text see above Ch. 2 n. 70, p. 71.
5. David and Yahweh
191
M 2
So it was
that, when the king was settled in his house.... the king said to Nathan
2
So it will be that, when your days are fulfilled...
after you...
I will raise up your offspring
Figure 16: Syntactico-Rhetorical Parallels between 2 Sam. 7.1a,2 and 7.12
In la.2 the king, enjoying the full flood of his success and power,
sovereignly plans to build for Yahweh, his sponsored god, a dwelling
of regal grandeur. In v. 12 Yahweh sovereignly undertakes for David
his client-subject, after his life and career has ended, to create a house
of royal authority.
In view of all this, Yahweh's abrupt announcement in 13a that
David's offspring will build 'a house for my name', is so entirely unexpected as to be quite perplexing. There are three major reasons for
puzzlement. First, the topic 'temple' has been absent from Yahweh's
discourse since 5b-7, and thus makes a quite unprepared re-entrance
here. Second, the categorical terms in which Yahweh had there rejected
David's initiative cannot but have led the addressee (and the reader) to
suppose that Yahweh was not prepared to entertain the idea of a temple
at all. Third, pragmatic logic requires the referent of the pronominal
subject (Kin) in this announcement to be individual,67 whereas discourse logic has already established its textual referent, 'your offspring'
(-p-lT 12ap), as collective.
Yet evidently 13a has been framed so as to create its own discourse
cohesion. Its initial otiose pronominal subject 'he it is' (Kin) is intended
to correspond to the similarly emphatic initial 'is it you?' (nnttn) of 5b,
and the concluding 'house for my name' ('DtD1? JTD) to the similarly
concluding 'settled house' (TOtO*? IT3) in 5b. Manifestly 13a is
67. This is the straightforward implicature of the particular predication made of

Kin in 13a, which would normally be ascribed to an individual. It is, I suppose, just
conceivable that collective reference might still be construed of Kin, i.e. that 13a
announces the building of a temple by David's 'offspring' generally, without differentiating the act to a particular individual among them. But given the dominating
place of Solomon as temple-builder in the biblical tradition, this way of reading the
text is unlikely, and I am not aware that any interpreter has adopted it.
192
constructed to be an answer to 5b, closely paralleling both the latter's

terminology and format (see Figure 17):68
?you will build me a house for my dwelling
he
will build
a house for my name
5b
13a
Figure 17: Direct Parallelism between 2 Sam. 7.5b and 7.13a
But in fact, for this particular rhetoric to work, the listener must now,
retrospectively, drastically revise his understanding of what it was
Yahweh rejected in 5b, from the comprehensive entity 'settled house,
fixed temple' as required by Yahweh's polemic in 6-7, to the restricted
entity 'dwelling-temple' as required by 13a. Thus in effect Yahweh is
now telling David, for the first time in his discourse, that the reason
David is not being permitted to build a temple is that he intended to
build the wrong kind of temple. On the other hand, his offspring will
build one, because he will build the right kind.
This particular rhetoric creates yet another difficulty. Yahweh has
already, but a moment since, constructed an impressive answer to 5b,
namely, llbp\ Why then a second answer hard upon the heels of the
first? What is the connection between them? Is David somehow meant
to conflate the original rhetorical question (5b) with its two answers
(1 Ibp, 13a) thus: 'you David are not to build me a fixed dwelling-house
temple, but it is I who will make for you a dynastic housebut your
offspring will build a fixed temple, because he will build the right kind,
a temple for my name'? Yet so far David has not been given enough
information to process the first opposition involved, let alone add in a
second!
Moreover, 'and I will establish his royal throne for ever' (13b) exacerbates the problem of cohesion. For throughout his discourse so far
Yahweh has been at pains to stress his sovereign power, making it crystal clear to David that everything has been and always will be on his
initiative. That the divine prerogative of sovereign freedom in all matters was fundamental to his rejection of David's plan to build him a
68. This is direct, as against chiastic, parallelism, with corresponding elements
appearing in the same order, and with the same stress: Kin answers to ntlK, and
'DS1? to 'ras?*?. Note the absence in 13a of a direct analogue to'"? in 5b.
5. David and Yahweh
193
fixed temple (5b-7), has been constantly demonstrated in his actions for
David and for Israel (8-11 a), and remains fundamental in his undertaking to make a house for David (1 Ib). Yet here in 13b Yahweh is giving
a promise tit for tat, namely to uphold the throne of David's offspring
as reward for the latter's building Yahweh a fixed temple. Yahweh thus
appears happily to be obliging himself to David's offspring in a way he
has utterly repudiated in his dealings with David. From each of the
foregoing considerations it is very evident that v. 13 poses difficulties
of interpretation, to which we will need to return below.
In 14a Yahweh, again employing two parallel phrases whose redundant precision is quasi-legal,69 commits himself to a father-son relationship with David's offspring. David's promised house will thus
become Yahweh's house(hold), with Yahweh discharging the role of
head of house when David through death (12aa) is no longer there.
Accordingly, Yahweh will exercise in his adopted household the discipline incumbent on a head of house (14b). Delinquency is expected
('when they go astray' imjJrQ 14ba), and Yahweh intends to be no
indulgent father!
But 14bp-15 set a clear limit to the nature and extent of this discipline. Yahweh will inflict on David's offspring only the same kind of
punishment as a human father would employ CWm D'GJM* COED
D~!K "OH 14bpy). This limitation of what he will do by way of discipline,
is the first half of an undertaking intended to rule out the obvious, but
much more drastic, sanction, that is, to repudiate the adoptive fatherson relationship with any erring member of the dynasty. For that would
be tantamount to rejecting David's house. Hence, in the second half of
his undertaking about punishment, Yahweh assures David that, differently from his response to the disobedience of David's predecessor,
Saul (15b),70 the loyalty inherent in his personal relationship to David's
offspring OlOFT) will remain constant (15a). On the hermeneutics of
suspicion the reader, noting that Yahweh offers no explanation for this
disparity in divine dealing,71 may therefore wonder just what this
69. It may in fact be based on a performative expression used in legal adoption,
which may also be reflected in the so-called covenant formulary 'I am/will be your
God, and you are/will be my people'.
70. Though Yahweh does not mention Saul's disobedience as such, it is clearly
implicit in 15b. The principal narratives concerning this are 1 Sam. 13.7-14; 15.135.
71. A most dramatic exposure of this disparity results from comparing 2 Sam.
12.13-14 with 1 Sam. 15.24-27: David, having committed adultery, and callously
194
assurance amounts to. David, however, can take comfort in the realization that there will never be a future non-Davidic David to gloat, as he
did in 6.21, over the ejection of a future Davidic Michal!
But as if to forestall any such deconstruction of his assurance, Yahweh rounds it off with a clinching summary (16) in two parallel, largely
synonymous, clauses: David's ruling royal house ("[rD^QQI "[ITO 16a,
-jOD 16b) will be firmly established (]Qtf] 16a, ]1DD 16b) before
Yahweh ("OS1? 16a) in perpetuity (QÎU IS! 16a, 16b). What is newly
explicit in this summing up is that Yahweh's commitment extends in
perpetuity. For though this idea is implied in 14-15, Yahweh
maximizes the impact of the words 'in perpetuity' (DÎD ~IU), 72 by
withholding them until this climactic statement, by then repeating them
in short order (16a, 16b), and by making them the very final words of
his discourse. Thus v. 16 condenses together and caps all the points
expounded by Yahweh in vv. llb-12, 14-15 of the final segment of his
discourse.
In the final segment of his discourse, then, as the text now stands
(vv. 1 lb-16), Yahweh has thus announced to David:
(1) Yahweh will make David a 'house' (= ?);
(2) after his death, Yahweh will establish David's own offspring in a
secure kingdom (12);
(3) David's offspring will build a 'house' (= temple) for Yahweh's
name (13a), in return for which Yahweh will support his kingship in perpetuity (13b);
(4) David's offspring will enjoy a father-son relationship with Yahweh, of such a sort that wrongdoing will incur punishment but
will not rupture the relationship (14-15);
procured murder in an attempt to cover his misdemeanour, on confessing his sin to
Nathan (miT1? TlRtan) is assured of Yahweh's forgiveness; Saul, having failed to
implement fully the sacred ban, is denied forgiveness by Samuel, though he makes
the fuller confession ('"m mrr '3 n TTQJJ O TlKBn).
72. Modern Western readers should not exaggerate the import of D^liJ 11? and
like expressions in Hebrew, a mistake that results from the standard English
rendering 'for ever'. In general they express the notion of extension into the
indefinite future, but this is not the same as asserting the absence of any time
limitation whatsoever. Moreover, such expressions are used in Hebrew in contexts
like 1 Sam. 1.22; 20.15, 23, where the possible extension into the future is
pragmatically limited by the very finite duration of the human lifespan. See the
examples cited by Eslinger (1994: 46-48), where, however, he too readily concedes
the notion of 'eternity' to some instances.
5. David and Yakweh
195
(5) thus David's royal 'house' (= dynasty) will be securely established on his throne in perpetuity (16).
From this summary and our preceding discussion it is evident that virtually the whole of Yahweh's words in 12-16 are devoted to an explication of the kind of house he intends to make for David, and moreover
that as early as v. 12 it emerges that 'house = dynasty'. Strictly only the
four words of 13a (Vtih TO TO11 Kin, 'he it is who will build a house
for my name') deviate from this task, to add a parenthesis about the
kind of house David's offspring will build for Yahweh. While 13b is, in
itself, compatible with 12, 14-16, it nonetheless belongs closely with
13a, as our earlier discussion showed.
Clearly, crucial to the construing of these assertions is clarity about
the pragmatic reference made by "]JTH, 'your offspring' 12ap, and its
pronominal anaphors in vv. 13-16. Decisive for our context is that
vv. 12, 14-16 are comment on the topic defined by llbp, the 'house'
which Yahweh undertakes to make for David. It is apparent already by
v. 12 that the 'house' Yahweh is promising David in llbp will be
'made' through the continuation of rulership in his own direct line of
descent: that is, the 'house' in question is a royal dynasty, ruling into
the indefinite future. This is, further, the evident implicature of Yahweh's strong assertion of continued loyalty, even under provocation, to
David's offspring (14-15). Finally, it is stated quite unambiguously in
Yahweh's closing summary (16), where he knits together the comment
with the opening topic statement (llb(3). Thus the hendiadys 'your
royal dynasty' ("[fD^QQI "[JV3) unites terms from llbp and 12bp, in
parallel with the metaphorical use of ~[KCO, 'your (royal) throne = your
sovereignty', in a highly emphatic (QÎU "IJJ twice) statement of the
perpetuity of monarchic rule in the dynasty of David.
Thus this final segment of Yahweh's discourse, 1 lbp-16, is bounded
by a topic sentence (llbp) and a summary statement (16), both of
which use the term rV2, 'house', with metaphorical reference to
'dynasty'. Although, as we indicated above, the compressed brevity of
the topic sentence would not have made this metaphorical use of TO as
a collective immediately perspicuous to the addressee, this he would
expect the comment to do. Hence in the comment, on the pragmatic
principles of discourse coherence and minimum processing effort, the
key parallel term WK, 'offspring', can be expected to have similar and
consistent collective reference. In fact, the predications of U"H in
vv. 12,14-15 all fulfil this expectation, and the reappearance of TO as a
196
transparent collective in the concluding summary statement clinches it.

Yahweh's discourse thus employs two parallel, but not synonymous,
terms in its exposition of llbp: the aggregating collective IT3, in initiating the topic (1 Ibp) and in summarizing it (16a); and the individuating collective IHT, in developing the comment (12, 14-15).73 This
allows assertions to be made both about the dynasty as an undifferentiated whole (JV3), and about its constituent members viewed as individual members of the whole (in?).
This otherwise perspicuous system of reference is, however, disrupted by 13a in two major ways:
(1) Retrospectively 13a imposes individual reference on 'your offspring' (~p~)T 12a|5), whereas collective reference for the term
has already been indicated by (i) its discourse relation to IV 3 in
llbp; (ii) its definition as 'your offspring after you'; and is subsequently confirmed by the further development of the comment
in 14-16.
(2) JV3 in 13a makes an unsignalled and completely isolated reversion to 'house = temple' in a context otherwise expounding
'house = dynasty'.74
Moreover, this assertion, abruptly injected into the discourse and as
abruptly abandoned, is completely contrary to the logical well-formedness and rhetorical expansiveness we have otherwise observed in Yahweh's discourse. Yahweh's uncompromising arguments in 5b-7 above,
73. A pertinent further biblical instance of ITU = 'dynastic house' as aggregating collective and D~1T = '(numerous) offspring' as individuating collective being
used in parallel within the same context is Ruth 4.12. The witnesses to the union of
Boaz and Ruth wish Boaz's 'house' (JT3) to become like the house of Perez, i.e.
important because large, through the 'offspring' (JHT in the singular) Ruth will produce. The context here demands that the singular STlt refer to numerous progeny,
through whom the house may quickly be built up. A pertinent non-biblical instance
is found in the bilingual inscription from Tell Fekheriye (Abou-Assaf, Bordreuil
and Millard 1982), in which the Aramaic text has the singular zr' in parallel with
byt (wlSm : byth : wlSm : zr'h, Abou-Assaf, Bordreuil and Millard 1982: 23,1. 8).
The singular is the more significant, since the parallel Assyrian text reads the plural
NUMUN.MES-Su = zereSu (Abou-Assaf, Bordreuil and Millard 1982: 13, 1. 11,
15,1. 11), whereas various other features of the Aramaic text show it to be in general a rather literal translation of the Assyrian (cf. Millard and Bordreuil 1982:
139).
74. Thus I cannot agree at all with Mettinger's claim (1976: 52-53) that in
vv. 12-15 'interest is focussedon Solomon and the building of the temple'.
5. David and Yahweh
197
in rejection of David's temple-building initiative, had left no logical or

rhetorical room for a later concession of the point to one of his descendants. There was nothing there in Yahweh's trenchant demolition of the
idea of a fixed temple to give the slightest inkling that his objection was
actually solely to the kind of fixed temple David intended to build.75 If
this is what he is now saying, then far more than these four words,
injected merely as a throw-away parenthesis, are necessary to retrieve
the point and dispel confusion.
Thus to take one's cue from 13a, and assume consistent individual
reference for ITiT and its pronominal anaphors in 12-15,76 is not only to
ignore all the foregoing pragmatic and poetic features of our text, but
also in particular to weaken fatally the climactic rhetoric of v. 16. For
its reiterated 'in perpetuity' (D1^ "IJJ) coupled with its unarguable use
of 'house = dynasty' (IT3) makes it undubitable that far more than a
single successor to David is in view here. But, on this reading, v. 16
becomes a quite incoherent conclusion to Yahweh's discourse, gravely
lacking support from comment which, ex hypothesi, is solely concerned
with just one immediate successor. On the contrary, on the principles of
relevance and proportion in discourse, hitherto consistently manifested
in Yahweh's speech, v. 16 clearly presupposes that the preceding
comment has been, not about one descendant in the generation after
David, but about a dynasty which will continue through an indefinite
number of generations.
Therefore all these considerations show how puzzlingly isolated 13a
is in its immediate context,77 and how it belies the well-formedness
otherwise manifest in Yahweh's discourse. It introduces in fact considerable 'noise' into the climax of Yahweh's speech, scrambling not only
the immediate exposition of the climactic topic 'house = dynasty' (1 Ib12,14-16), but also, retrospectively, Yahweh's crucial earlier argument
rejecting 'house = temple' (5b-7). Thus any effort to unscramble the
message inclusive of 1378 forces a drastic retrospective rereading of the
75. On the contrary, a QTIK ITD, 'house of cedar', was precisely what Solomon
built Yahweh according to the biblical tradition. Yet Yahweh contemptuously
parallels TQtfh m, 'fixed house' (5b), with DTIK IT3 (7b) in the inclusio framing
5b-7.
76. As is done, e.g., by Mowinckel (1947: 207-208), Mettinger (1976: 52-53),
and Eslinger( 1994: 49-52).
77. It should further be noted that not only is 13a left isolated in Yahweh's discourse, but it is also totally ignored in the whole of David's response, vv. 18-29.
78. Although itself unobjectionable in terms of content, 13b belongs, as I
198
whole of Yahweh' s discourse, and thereby imputes to Yahweh either

disingenuousness or ineptitude, or both.79 Moreover, no sooner are the
mental gymnastics for such a rereading imposed, than they have to be
performed all over again, now to accommodate the irresistible import
of v. 16, where Yahweh patently refers to an ongoing dynasty, not
merely to one immediate successor to David. Without 13, however, the
third segment of Yahweh's speech (llb-12,14-16) is not only fully
coherent, but also brings to a logical and rhetorical climax all that has
gone before.
I am therefore forced to suppose that 13 has been added to the text,80
by a reader whose presuppositions held it as axiomatic that the Solomonic temple was approved by Yahweh. Accordingly, such a reader
read 5b, not as rejecting the building for Yahweh of any temple qua
'fixed abode', as required by the context 5b-7, but only as interdicting
the building of one by David, because he proposed a kind unacceptable
to Yahweh. The ambiguity of the expression VUtib m (5b), when not
read in close conjunction with its context in 5b-7, allowed it to be read
instead in terms of the foregoing presupposition as 'dwellinghouse
temple'. But this same reader therefore missed a clear corresponding
statement according the divine imprimatur to Solomon's temple, as the
right kind of building. Hence this statement (13a) was added at the first
clear opportunity offered in the text. The opportunity was afforded by
reading 'your offspring' (~p~ir 12a) in the singular rather than in the
collective sense, again in defiance of contextual indicators, as a reference to Solomon, David's son and successor. The reviser then differenindicated above, so closely with 13a that it must stand or fall with the latter. In any
case, shorn of 13 a, 13b is so repetitious of 12b in both vocabulary and sentiment,
that it is unlikely to have followed on from 12b directly.
79. Those, such as Mowinckel (1947) and Mettinger (1976: 52-59), who put
7.13 at the centre of their understanding of 7.1-17 do not deal adequately with these
observations, whose import is further reinforced by my later discussion of the structure of Yahweh's discourse (see esp. 5.3.2 below). Nor, incidentally, do they adequately explain why David's prayer (vv. 18-29) totally ignores 13a.
80. I am of course perfectly aware that this particular conclusion is not original
to me, and that other readers, from at least the time of Wellhausen (1871: 171-72)
and S.R. Driver (1913: 276 n. 1: ? a parenthesis) onwards have reached a similar
conclusion. Indeed, if my arguments are sound, then that is only to be expected. To
my knowledge, however, none has examined the issue either in such detail or so
consistently from the point of view of discourse pragmatics, poetics, and polemics
in Yahweh's speech.
5. David and Yahweh
199
tiated Solomon's permitted from David's interdicted temple by opposing 'temple for my name' CQdb ITD 13a) to 'dwellinghouse temple'
(TOrh 173 5b so understood).81
5.2.1.5. Verse 17
With Yahweh's discourse thus having reached its goal, v. 17 comes as
a further piece of the relatively spare narrative framework of the chapter. This small element of narration inserts a necessary moment of
pause into the text, allowing the reader to draw breath following the
long sweep of Yahweh's discourse, and the momentous revelation in
which it climaxed. As a segment of the minimal plot thread the verse
picks up, with an almost fussy precision, on the repeated noting of
Yahweh's transmission of the oracle to David through Nathan (4-5a,
8aa), to apprise the reader of how faithfully Nathan reports to David
Yahweh's discourse. At the same time it also refers back to v. 3, where
Nathan speciously mediated to David a divine approval now repudiated.
This time Nathan sticks to the divinely dictated script!
But how did the prophet approach the king with this abrupt change of
heart? What was David's reaction to hearing from his court prophet the
first segment of the oracle, in which his great project was so scathingly
dismissed? Our text does not say. Dramatic development of this kind
has no place here, where all attention is focused on identifying the message as Yahweh's word, fully and faithfully delivered to David. Thus
not only does v. 17 carry forward the tenuous plot thread, but it does so
in terms that stress the theme of David's hearing the words of Yahweh.82 Hence, together with 18a, 17 serves as a transition to the final
part of our stretch of text (18b-29), where the complementary thematic
element of David's response to Yahweh's word is developed to its
climax.
5.2.2. Verses 18-29
The prayer of David in vv. 18-29 is quite repetitive and, at first sight,
unstructured. Psychologically, this seemingly incoherent repetitiveness
81. In fact, an example of this kind of reading is to be found in 1 Kgs 8.15-20,
where vv. 18-19 precisely link together 2 Sam. 7.5b-7 and 7.13a into a tendentious
paraphrase. On this see in detail my Claim for Power (forthcoming).
82. It shares with vv. 12-16 something of their redundancy and pedantic precision of expression. The point of that here in v. 17 is to make it quite clear that
David's prayer which follows immediately is a response to the prophetically medi
ated word of Yahweh.
200
conveys to the reader a vivid sense of how overwhelmed David feels at

the momentous words of Yahweh. Rhetorically, it effects a fundamental transformation in the portrayal of David, from the imperious yet
uneasy truculence of his royal pretension (1-3), to a totally subservient
acquiescence in the divine prerogative (25-29). But in fact there is a
clear and simple ternary structure to the prayer, as I have already outlined (5.2 above). Our close reading will accordingly treat in turn its
three main subsections, exposition (18-21), praise (22-24), and petition
(25-29).
5.2.2.1. Verses 18-21
This first subsection of the prayer I have termed, rather blandly,
'exposition', because in it David alludes to the main elements of Yahweh's discourse, which then form the basis, both for the intermezzo of
praise ('accordingly', p ^S 22), and the concluding petitions ('so
now', nnin 25). But it is no exposition in the usual sense of a clear and
measured setting forth of basic ideas. No, all is surprised exclamation
and wondering question here, expressive of the momentousness to
David of Yahweh's discourse.
Moreover, the subsection incorporates a number of ironies of reversal, by means of which the reader is made aware of the transformation
in David's relationship to Yahweh wrought by the divine word. Mostly
the ironies inhere in verbal echoes of elements from Yahweh's speech,
which are here given telling recontextualization. But the subsection
begins (18) and ends (21) with very powerful transforms of the opening
scene of the chapter (7.1-3). Thus here David moves from ensconcement in his 'house', symbol of his power and status (1-2), to install
himself submissively in humble surrounds before Yahweh (18a). And
whereas he then thought to command from his sponsored divinity a
word approving his grand plan (2-3), he now confesses to his divine
lord the sovereign freedom of the divine will, graciously made known
to him through the prophetic word (21).
First, the designation 'the king David' ("111 "[^Qn 18act) evokes 'the
king' tout court ("[^QH) used in vv. 1-3, but subtly transforms it by the
addition of the PN. David is no longer the melek absolute, scheming to
entrench his power over the royally sponsored god. He is but part of a
long line of kings, the individual members of which need to be distinguished by name, that is, just one member of a house whose position
will be entrenched by the power of Yahweh.
5. David and Yahweh
201
Second, the verb 'be settled, installed' (32T 18a0) was the very first
predication of 'the king' in la. 83 But whereas in la.2 the king's
ensconcement in his house was a given state from which the text starts,
here King David's installation before Yahweh requires an act to be voluntarily undertaken ('...went in and sat', 3tzri..N3r) 18a): David's
physical relocation presages his mental and spiritual transformation.
Then, third, here the king's ensconcement is not in his own house (13), but 'before Yahweh' (miT ''B'?). How ironically resonant now of
David's proprietary insistence on this expression to Michal (6.21, and
cf. 6.5a, 14a, 17b)! The king, in his royal pretension installed in his
splendid cedar-palace as seeming master of the ark and its god, must
quit that splendour to acknowledge the divine prerogative in the presence of Yahweh himself. Where does he go? By narrative implicature
into that very same ark-tent to which David had brought the ark (6.17),
the tent whose humbleness in comparison to his own house ill-matched
the status of the royally sponsored god. And thus also before the ark
itself,84 potent symbol of that very divine sovereignty whose control
David had been scheming to achieve.85
Finally, in setting the scene for his prayer, we are told, for the first
time in our stretch of text, that David speaks directly to Yahweh (""iQK'n
18ba). Drawn out of the pretentious splendour of his royal palace into
the simple surrounds of the ark, 'the king' has been forced, by the
83. Thus the verb is used five times between la and 6aa (la, 2ay, 2b(3, 5b, 6aa),
most strikingly in TQ,tih ITD, 'a house for my dwelling', in Yahweh's disparaging
question (5b). 18a[3 is its only other occurrence in the text.
84. A similar combination of Kin, 'go in', and mm 'DS1? D2T, 'sit before Yahweh', is found in Judg. 20.26, in a context which asserts the presence of the ark
(20.27). Less close verbally, but still informative, is a comparison with 2 Kgs
19.14-15 = Isa. 37.14-15, where Hezekiah goes up to the temple, spreads Sennacherib's letter 'before Yahweh' (mm ^S1?), and prays 'before Yahweh' (Isa.
37.15 mm "?, 'to Yahweh'), invoking him as 3BT ^tofcr TI^K [m3JS] mm
D'TlDi!, 'Yahweh [of Hosts (Isa. 37.16)] God of Israel enthroned on the cherubim',
thus using a transform of the liturgical expression associated with the ark in 2 Sam.
6.2 above, cf. 1 Sam. 4.4.
85. Another layer of irony in the use of miT 'B^ DKT, 'sit before Yahweh', here
is suggested by DTftK '3S1? D^ll? [f^QH] 32T, 'may he [scil. the king] be enthroned
for ever before God' Ps. 61.8[7], where its use suggests that the expression was a
cliche of the royal cult, i.e., part of the royal pretension! Moreover, 61.5[4] mi3
pSD ~incn H0n D'OÎW f^ntO, 'may I always reside in your tent, and find
refuge in the shadow of your wings', sets both petitions in the cultic context of the
ark and its overshadowing cherubim.
202
properly mediated word of Yahweh, out of the wilful difference

towards Yahweh born of his royal pretension, into an unreserved deference to the divine prerogative.
David opens his prayer with a self-disparaging rhetorical question:
'who am I, my lord Yahweh, and what is my (father's) house?' CO]N ""Q
TTa 'Ql miT "HK 18ba). Though conventional enough,86 the reader can
hardly miss the contextual irony first of all in the parallels of form and
content of this utterance with the disparaging rhetorical question (5b)
which began the divine word to David! Then irony is manifest further
in the self-parody of David's opening gambit to Nathan 'Look here
now, 7 am settled in a cedar-house, but the ark of God...' (N3 i"IK~l
...DYI^n JUKI DTIK JTm ntf' OJK 2ay). Those words clearly
presumed T to be somebody of note living in an appropriate house,
whose position was being let down by the shabby housing of the ark.87
Without ever in his prayer specifically alluding to the first segment of
Yahweh's speech, let alone his own earlier approach to Nathan so
ignominiously dismissed by it, David in the very opening words of his
prayer betrays its powerful effect upon him.
Another important reflection of David's change of attitude is evident
also in the form of address to Yahweh he employs here first, to become
the standing form in his prayer: 'my lord, Yahweh' (miT ^Tt^).88 The
expression, modelled on the conventional form of address to a king,89 is
an explicit recognition of the sovereignty of Yahweh, and is complemented by David's standard form of self-reference in the prayer as
'your subject' ("]~QD 19a(3, etc). Here the address is interjected immediately following the self-disparaging 'who am I?' ("ODN "), to make a
telling juxtaposition between the "O]N resonant of royal pretension (cf.
2ay) and the "'HK which cedes the divine prerogative. Having thus in
the presence of Yahweh deconstructed his hitherto ambitious and
grasping persona, hereafter in his prayer David refers to himself only in
the self-effacing third person style.90
In 18bp-19 David motivates (O 'that' 18bp) his disparagement of
86. For some other examples of rhetorical fQll./Q in disparaging utterances, cf.
Exod. 3.11; 1 Sam. 18.18; 1 Chron. 29.14 (all first person self-reference); Zech. 4.7
(second person); Exod. 5.2; Judg. 9.38; 1 Sam. 25.10 (third person).
87. Behind the barely concealed pretension of these words lies the disingenuousness of his exchange with Michal 6.21-22.
88. On the textual reading see my discussion above Ch. 2 n. 79, pp. 76-77.
89. 1 Sam. 24.9[8], 26.17, 19 and frequently.
90. He does, however, include himself in the first person plural referent of 22b(3.
5. David and Yahweh
203
himself and his house (18ba) by reference back to Yahweh's discourse.

Though none of the actual terms of this utterance correlate specifically
with terms in Yahweh's speech, it is quite evident, first of all, that 19a(3
is a reference to the final segment of Yahweh's discourse, the promise
of a dynasty in perpetuity: compare 'concerning your servant's house in
the distant future' (piniQ^ -\~ftS m *7K) with v. 16 in particular.
Thence, by discourse implicature from 'but this is a mere trifle to you'
CjTJn HKT Tltf ppm 19aa, with anaphora of 'this' HKT to the clause
18bp), and from the 'also' (D3) of 19a(3, 18bp must refer to action of
Yahweh for David antecedent to the promised house, that is, to David's
career as expounded in 8ap~9. Thus 'to this point' (D^n ~IU) picks up on
David's promised exaltation to the ranks of the great of the earth (9b).
So if 18b|3-19aa refer back to David's career as set out in 8ap-9, then
by further discourse implicature 'my house' (TP3) in 18ba refers, not to
the future Davidic house, to which David alludes first in 19a(3, but to
the house from which David himself was taken by Yahweh, that is, his
father's house.
Given this ordered string of summary references, first to the second
and then to the third segment of Yahweh's speech, the problematic
utterance 19b, following on from 19ap (? 'and this' DKT1 as an anaphor
to the whole of 19a|3), looks as though it too should be a resume of
something Yahweh said in the third segment of his discourse. Yet,
while the term 'humanity' (DTKif) is certainly reminiscent of
'humanity' (DIN S3D) in 14bp, one may doubt whether '?the instruction
of humanity' (DTKn mil"! 19b), can mean the same as 'and with the
strokes of humanity = the discipline practised by humanity' C:D "'Jttm
D1K 14bf}), assuming that it is a reference back to this verse. But doubt
about the text only exacerbates the difficulty of understanding, and the
clause remains opaque.91
David's resort to a second rhetorical question92 'and what more can
your subject say to you?' (f^K im1? "["DD TU) epOV TO! 20a)93 also
conventional in tone,94 reinforces the sense of his confoundment at
91. See above Ch. 2 n. 80, pp. 77-78. For attempts to explicate the meaning of
7.19b see.Eissfeldt (1973) and Kaiser (1974).
92. Thus paralleling in number the two used by Yahweh in the first segment of
his discourse. Similarly, all the rest of David's prayer is in statement form, just as
the second and third segments of Yahweh's speech.
93. For the text see Ch. 2 n. 81, p. 78.
94. The nearest parallels I have found are Josh. 7.8 and Ezra 9.10. They have,
however, somewhat more in common with one another than with 2 Sam. 7.20. Both
204
Yahweh's words. Once again the exclamatory question is provoked by

David's reflection on Yahweh's discourse (20b-21). This relation is
implied through simple coordination, without specific discourse-logical
connector, but with an emphatic otiose pronoun subject: 'and (= since)
you know your subject' (HUT "|13JJ n nriNl 20b). Here David's mor
generalized allusions to Yahweh's discourse are linked together by an
inclusio between 20b and 21b. Thus David's confession that 'you know
your servant' (ntfT "[intf HR HHR1 20b), a reflection on Yahweh's
direction of David's career in 8a-lla, parallels his acknowledgment of
Yahweh's goodness 'in making your subject to know' (DK JTTin'?
"]~Q# 21b), a reference to the promise in lib-16. But besides its mor
obvious reference to the second segment of Yahweh's discourse, one
may catch in 20b oblique reference also to the crushingly intimate
knowledge of David Yahweh manifested in the first segment of his
speech. And does not the expression 'because of your word and according to your mind = because of your self-determined word' (~[~n~I TOIO
~[ltol 21aa) also ruefully evoke the self-determined but unstated word
in David's mind ("|nO "ItfR 3a) in 2-3?
There is thus a high degree of parallelism in form and substance
between 18b-19 and 20-21. Each begins with a rhetorical question
expressive of just how overwhelmed David feels at the momentousness
of Yahweh's word. In each instance the reflections which have provoked the question are then expressed. In both cases the reflections are
concerned with Yahweh's account of David's career, and his promise
of a dynasty, in that order. But whereas in 18bp~19 David is taken up
more with the externals of Yahweh's deeds and promises, with what he
and his house will get out of them, in 20b-21 he turns to their inner
occur in prayers of confession and contrition, and are very similarly worded (see
Figure 18):
josh. 7.8
Prithee, Lord, what shall I say
enemy?
after Israel has turned his back on his
Ezra 9.10
And now
what shall we say, O our God, after this, that we have abandoned your
commandments?
Figure 18: Parallels between Josh. 7.8 and Ezra 9.10
Nonetheless, the general similarities with 2 Sam. 7.20 are at least suggestive of this
sort of thing being a conventional part of the repertoire of prayer.
5. David and Yahweh
205
significance, with what they reveal about his relationship to Yahweh,

the god who knows and makes known.
5.2.2.2. Verses 22-24
David's depreciation of himself and magnification of Yahweh leads
(p by, 'therefore',95 22a) into general praise of Yahweh for his greatness (22a) and incomparability (22b). Once again, cliches of conventional sentiment96 are made integral to the development of David's
prayer as a response to Yahweh's discourse. Here David submerges his
own identity in that of his fellow-Israelites ('from all that we have
heard with our ears', irJttQ UlOtf "ltf 'PDn 22b(3) to confess the divine
pre-eminence.
From this generalizing phrase at the end of v. 22, the motif of incomparability is then extended to Israel. Verse 23 is notable for its unusually elaborate syntax and interlocking of ideas,97 but is still more or less
intelligible despite the obvious corruption of MT98. Contrary to the compressed allusiveness of the earlier references back to Yahweh's discourse (18b|3-19 and 20b-21), 23-24 extensively elaborate Yahweh's
passing reference to the redemption from Egypt (6act). In doing so
these verses draw on expressions from elsewhere in Yahweh's discourse, recontextualizing them in significant ways. First, the phrase 'to
establish a reputation (name) for himself (D2? ib UWb 23ba) echoes 'so
as to make you a name (reputation)' (D2J ~\b Tl&Ul 9aa).99 David thus
95. For comparable use as a transitional connector in Psalms, cf. Ps. 18.50[49],
45.18[17].
96. For rfna, 'you are great', cf. Ps. 104.1 (second person of Yahweh); 35.27;
40.17[16]; 70.5[4] (all third person of Yahweh); and in the form nPK hma note
especially Ps. 86.10; Jer. 10.6. For ~[1QD ]', 'none is like you', cf. Ps. 86.8; Jer.
10.6 (MT]'KD); 1 Kgs 8.23; and the closely comparable -pOD '0, 'who is like you?'
Exod. 15.11; Mic. 7.18; Ps. 35.10; 71.19; 89.9[8]; 113.5. For -jrfTlT DTT^K ]'*,
'there is no god beside you', cf. Isa. 45.5; Hos. 13.4; and Ps. 18.32[31]. For ^DD
irDTtO 1DUQEJ ~I2?K, 'as everything we have heard with our ears', cf. Ps. 44.2[1]; also
Job 28.22; Jer. 26.11.
97. The closest analogues to its syntax are to be found in Deut. 4.7-8; 5.26;
3.24. For the ideas and/or expression cf. also Deut. 33.29; 7.6-7; 10.14-15; 9.26;
21.8; 7.21; 10.21, etc. Evidently, as has been widely recognized, this text reflects
comparable influence on its expression and ideas.
98. On the problems of the text see above Ch. 2 n. 86, pp. 79-82.
99. This is a unique instance of the locution HD UW having the sense 'to establish a reputation'. Elsewhere Dti D1& (Judg. 8.31; 2 Kgs 17.34; Neh. 9.7; Dan. 1.7)
has the sense 'bestow a name (upon)', whereas 'to make a reputation for oneself is
206
subsumes his own glory into the greater glory of Yahweh, at the same
time eclipsing Yahweh's gracious act in exalting David by his even
more gracious act in having redeemed his people. Then yet more
boldly, 24 as it were recasts 13b-14100 into a unique101 restatement of
the so-called covenant formulary, thereby implicitly affirming the
supremacy of Yahweh's relationship to Israel over that to the Davidic
dynasty.
By developing the praise motif of the divine incomparability thus
extensively, these two verses have strayed some distance from the
immediate preoccupation of David's prayer with the essentials of Yahweh's discourse. To this preoccupation David now returns in the final
section of the prayer. But this intermezzo, focusing as it does on
Yahweh's relationship with his people, has its analogue in 10-1 la of
Yahweh's speech.
always D27 niW>: Gen. 11.4 (humankind); 2 Sam. 8.13 (David); Isa. 63.12; Jer.
32.20; Neh. 9.10; Dan. 9.15 (all of Yahweh). As with the present text, each of the
last four examples cites the deliverance from Egypt as the making of Yahweh's
reputation. Moreover, each occurs within a prayer, but unlike our present text, each
is a prayer of lamentation and/or confession.
100. The extent of the relationship may be seen from setting the texts out in
parallel (see Figure 19):
7
I will firmly establish his royal throne
in perpetuity
7
You firmly established your people Israel to be your people in perpetuity
7
I will become
their father
and they will become
my sons
and you became
their God
7
7
Figure 19: Parallels between 2 Sam. 7.13b-14a and 7.24
101. No other version of the covenant formulary includes cbw "TI?, 'for ever', as
part of the statement. The nearest analogues are two texts where a version of the
covenant formulary is used in the same context as the term cbw rr~Q, 'perpetual
covenant': Jer. 32.38-40; Ezek. 37.26-27. But these formulations both use a
\veqatal... \-yiqtol construction referring to a future relationship to be effected in a
period of restoration, whereas the present formulation uses a wayyiqtol...x-qatal
construction of a past transaction.
5. David and Yahweh
207
5.2.2.3. Verses 25-29

The opening 'and now' (nni?1 25), marking the transition to petition102
in this prayer, is immediately followed by the vocative 'my lord Yahweh'.103 But whereas the first imperative addressed to Yahweh
('establish' Dpi! 25ay) might have been expected to follow next, this is
postponed by bringing forward instead the grammatical object and its
defining clause: 'the word you have spoken concerning your servant
and concerning his house' (IfTa ^P\ -[-Ql? *?S3 mm "itiN -Q"in 25a|5).
This inversion makes this unit highly salient in the utterance, a salience
increased by the resumptive 'just as you have spoken' (n~Q~! HttJfcO) at
the end of the verse. The inversion also gives secondary stress to the
postponed verbal phrase 'confirm for ever' (DÎD IP Dpi! 25ay). That
this petition thus makes summary reference to Yahweh's promise to
David of a dynasty in perpetuity is confirmed by what follows in 26-29.
But here again the conventional terms David employs, perfectly at
home in their immediate context, draw with ironic effect on expressions
used by Yahweh in his polemic against David.
Thus the common locution 'to speak a word' ("lin ~lin)104 has
occurred but once before in our text, in Yahweh's second rhetorical
question 'was there ever a word I spoke?' Crnin "linn 7.7aa). But
whereas that was a word, concerning anyone's building a cedar house =
temple for Yahweh, Yahweh never spoke to any Israelite, and hence
not to David, this is one, concerning Yahweh's making a house =
dynasty for David, he has decisively spoken to David through his
spokesman Nathan. Hence the second petitionary phrase 'and do just as
102. nnui is used similarly in other prayers: Neh. 9.32, where it marks transition
from confession to petition; Num. 14.17 and Jon. 4.3, transition from motivation to
petition; Dan. 9.15, transition from confession to petition via a summary confessional statement; Ps. 39.8[7], transition from complaint to petition via a summary
statement of the complaint.
103. For the reading m!T "DIN, 'my lord Yahweh', here see the textual note
above, Chapter 2 n. 79, pp. 76-77. Other examples in prayers of nnui being followed directly by invocation of Yahweh are 2 Kgs 19.19 = Isa. 37.20; 64.7[8]; Jon.
4.3; Dan. 9.15; Neh. 9.32.
104. The locution is extremely common in the Hebrew Bible, as is to be
expected, given the frequency with which reference needs to be made to words
spoken by humans as well as by Yahweh, and given the Hebrew penchant for the
figura etymologica. The interplay noted here between this verse and v. 7 above by
means of this locution is evidence in favour of the reading of MT in 7.7. See above,
Ch. 2, p. 68 n. 60.
208
you have spoken' (n"Q"7 "ICJtO n&#l 25b), recalls with notable irony
Nathan's perfunctory 'word' encouraging David in his ill-fated initiative: 'all you have in mind go and do' (nfrtf ~p "plto ~\m * 3ap)!105
So in David's mouth the openly declared plan of Yahweh erases the
plan David dared not declare openly. Through these allusions in v. 25,
then, David effaces his own initiative for Yahweh (2-3, 5b-7) beneath
the supremacy of the divine initiative in and through him (8-16), and
thus subtly signals his complete deference to the divine prerogative. In
his prayer David never refers directly to Yahweh's rejection of his initiative, but these oblique references106 say all that needs to be said.
Verse 26 continues with a weyiqtol verb whose exact force is uncertain. Given the petitionary context, at first sight it seems natural enough
to take it as jussive, 'And may your name be great for ever'. There is,
however, no clear parallel107 to this. Accordingly, I take în to have
consecutive-final force, and link 26a closely with 25b: 'confirm (your
word) forever, and do as you have said, so that your name may be great
for ever'. The resulting causal nexus between Yahweh's reputation and
his keeping his word is also invoked, more obliquely, in v. 28 below. In
the present context it provides a proper motivation for the petitionary
imperatives. The God whose reputation will thus be magnified108 David
invokes under the very formal-sounding title 'Yahweh of Hosts God
over Israel' ('Wlfcr ^ DT^R JT)K32i mrr).109 26b then resumes the
105. This makes it at least possible that there is a distant echoing of ICON ^D
n&U "p -]3Z (3ap) in rrfcW -p^DI in 21aap above.
106. There is further irony in the fact that their obliqueness is even greater than
was that of David's speech to Nathan broaching his initiative.
107. The only certain instance of'liy jussive is 'DTK FD 3 îr nnin, 'and now
grant that the power of my Lord be great...', in Moses' prayer to Yahweh, Num.
14.17. But this is part of a clear petition by Moses for Yahweh to do, or rather not
to do, something, in a way the present instance is not. In three instances of the same
set locution [DTI^N] mrr *?ir TOD notn in the Psalms (35.27; 40.17[16];
70.5[4]); ^"ir could be jussive, but is usually treated as declarative: 'they say con
tinually, "great is Yahweh (God)" '. Compare m!T "OIK rbl) p 'TD, 'therefore you
are very great, my lord Yahweh', 22a above.
108. Note the similarity in language to the terms of Yahweh's exaltation of
David in 9b.
109. I assume it to be a liturgical title, not attested elsewhere in this particular
form. Note, in view of my comments above on the implication of mm ''lEb, 'before
Yahweh' (18a), David's use here and in 27a of the title m22i mrr, 'Yahweh of
Hosts', closely associated with the ark cult. For the textual reading, see above Ch. 2
n. 90, p. 83.
5. David and Yahweh
209
petition in 25, expressing it as an affirmative in terms drawn from v. 16:

'as for your servant David's house, it will be firmly established (cf. ]1D]
16b) before you (cf. 'Eft 16a)'.110
Verse 27a links back to 26b through its explanatory "O: 'because you,
Yahweh of Hosts, God of Israel, have revealed to your servant...'
(...nn^: ^K-ICT TI^K rroas mrr nn o 27a), in this, the only explicit
citation of Yahweh's discourse in his prayer, the rather formal introduction matches 'and Yahweh solemnly announces to you' ("[^ ~nm
mrr llba), using the different idiom JTN il^, 'notify, inform, reveal'.111
David confesses the one who has made this unsolicited and momentous
revelation to him as YHWH Seba'ot, the god of the ark, the very god he
had been scheming to control. David's citation of the revealed word 'a
house (is what) I shall build you' ("J^ nntf ITU 27a(3) is not verbally
exact to 'a house (is what) Yahweh will make you' (mi
mm 7^ nfaiT 1 lb(3), but retains the noun-verb inversion, with its resultant stress on 'house'. Perhaps David's substitution of ntoJJ by nn, the
verb which hitherto has been associated with his own aborted initiative
(5b, 7b),112 is another subtle but telling signal of his total deference to
Yahweh's initiative.
110. Thus -pas'? ]"O3 rriT ITT -J-DJJ rrai 26b condenses the closing statement of
Yahweh's discourse, leaving out here the latter's repeated DÎU "ID, already used
twice by David in the present context in 25b-26a.
111. The 12 other occurrences of this idiom in the Hebrew Bible almost all
involve notifying, with varying degrees of formality, someone of something which
is of moment to that person. The most formal context is in Ruth 4.4, where in the
presence of the city elders Boaz notifies the go'el of his responsibility toward their
dead kinsman Elimelech. Semi-formal are Saul's castigations of his retinue for failing to inform him about the whereabouts of David (1 Sam. 22.8 bis, 17), and no
much less so are Jonathan's claims to be privy to his father's plans (1 Sam. 20.2)
and his protestations that he will keep David informed (1 Sam. 20.12, 13). Thre
examples in the mouth of Elihu (Job 33.16, 36.10,15), all concern God's making
by various means, the erring fully aware of the fact of their delinquency. Finally,
the idiom is used in 1 Sam. 9.15 and Isa. 22.14 of prophetic revelations made b
Yahweh to Samuel and Isaiah respectively. In Isa. 22.14 the revelation is made by
rmOX mn1 '3n, 'my lord, Yahweh of Hosts'. Rost's claim (1926: 63 = 1965: 17
= 1982: 48), that the expression refers to direct as against mediated disclosure is not
supported by "pTN PIN Tr^l p'w n^N TK N^l, 'shall I not in that case send to
notify you?' 1 Sam. 20.13b.
112. Apart from 13a, which we have argued above is rather a 'cuckoo in the
nest', this is the only occurrence of the verb since 7b. Thus the implications of its
210
Then 27a is itself causally linked to 27b (]D ^JJ, 'therefore') as justification for David's account in 27b of his boldness in thus approaching
Yahweh in prayer. David, who in 2 Samuel 6 acted without consulting
Yahweh at all, and in 7.1-3 with a mere show of consultation, now cites
the unsolicited divine word to him as grounds for talking to Yahweh,
and apologizes for doing so! It is ironic indeed that David's (3p^,
'heart, mind', which in 2-3 coyly concealed his plan from Yahweh,
now moves him to pray to him so volubly.113
Verses 28 and 29 embody the final, climactic, moment of David's
prayer. The two verses belong closely together: 'and so, well then'
(nniri), opens each, with the second instance, introducing the petition
proper, strictly being resumptive of the first. In v. 28 David provides a
summative statement of what he has been repeating in various forms
throughout 25-27, as the grounds for his final petition in the following
verse. The underlying strategy, typical of petitions, is obliquely to
remind Yahweh that his reputation is staked on keeping his word: you
are God, your word must prove true, and you have promised beneficence to your servant! The exclamatory 'it is you who are God'
(DTI^H Kin nntf 28ap), or closely similar formulations, occurs in other
prayers114 where it also supports petition to God with an appeal to his
reputation.
The petition in v. 29 incorporates in a motive clause ('for you my
lord Yahweh have spoken', mm mrr '31K nnR SD 29ba) yet one final
reference, the eighth in David's prayer,115 to this prevailing word of
Yahweh. David's earlier disinclination to consult Yahweh is completely effaced under his present obsession with the divine word. But
the dominating element of this petition is the thrice-repeated lexeme
'bless/ing' (~|"Q) and its connection with the twice-repeated 'your subject's house' ("["DI? fPD). This conjunction takes the reader back to the
scheming David of 2 Sam. 6.1-7.3, the David whose plans for the ark
use here bear comparison with those of the solitary reoccurrence of 3CZT, 'dwell', in
18ap, above.
113. The expression 3^ N^Q, 'find/take courage', occurs nowhere else in the
Hebrew Bible (not even in the parallel text, 1 Chron. 17.25), though it does occur in
the Hebrew text of Sir. 12.11.
114. But in these instances it occurs in the context of national jeopardy or disgrace, where the petition is for the divine mercy: cf. 2 Kgs 19.15 = Isa. 37.16; Jer.
14.22; Neh. 9.7; Ps. 44.5[4].
115. The other seven are 19ap, 21aa, 25a(3, 25b, 28ap, 28b (all "lin or "131 or
both), and 27aa (]TH rfa).
5. David and Yahweh
211
revolved around securing for his house(hold) the blessing of the ark
(especially 6.12,18b,20a). But that scheme Yahweh ruthlessly exposed
and repudiated (7.5b-7), a rejection obliquely acknowledged by David
earlier in his prayer. Now, climactically, he cedes to Yahweh all initiative and full control over the divine blessing: 'in your sovereign and
gracious will bless your subject's house' (~j"QJJ ITU DK "pTl ^Kin).
But in thus ceding all to the divine prerogative he secures, as a freely
given sure promise that can be relied upon in perpetuity (29b), that
divine blessing for his house which, in his royal pretension, he had
schemed to bring under his own control.
5.3. Rhetorical Structure and Technique in 2 Samuel 7.1-29
It is very evident from our close reading that the dynamic which drives
2 Samuel 7 is a rhetoric of persuasion. Yahweh's speech deploys such a
compelling line of argument as to induce David to abandon his great
project and totally to embrace Yahweh's initiative for himself and and
his house. It is the real word of Yahweh, when finally it comes, properly mediated from Yahweh to his spokesman (4-5a, 8aa, contrast 3),
and faithfully reported to the addressee (17), which is effectual in
accomplishing Yahweh's intention. Royal pretension submits without
reserve to divine prerogative. But in and through Yahweh's rhetoric, so
persuasive to the text's David, the author seeks to convert to his point
of view the envisaged reader.
My close reading has revealed how the details of this rhetoric serially
influence readers as they read the text linearly. It has also brought to
light the many references which link between different subunits of the
chapter, as well as with earlier parts of our stretch of text. The latter we
will return to in our next chapter. Our task now is to consider the
strategic deployment of these means within and between the sections of
this chapter, in order to discern their cumulative impact. I will thus
consider in turn each of the two major sections of 2 Samuel 7 with their
subunits.
53.1. Verses 1-17
This section begins with David's approach to Nathan the prophet,
ostensibly for guidance (la.2), and ends with the same prophet's
meticulous report to David of an oracle from Yahweh. The indication
of an inclusio is reinforced by the role of ITP3, 'house', as keyword in
212
1-2 and 16. That the referent of the word is different in each case is a
function of the rhetoric of the text in between. How, strategically, is
this rhetoric developed?
5.3.1.1. Verses 1-3
This subsection establishes 'house', and the enhancement of status
inherent in secure uninterrupted (Ib) ensconcement in splendid housing, as thematic. Thus the two references to David's house, his opulent
cedar-house (la, 2a0), and the concomitant contrastive reference to the
ark's simple tent (2b), are complemented by three occurrences of the
verb 'be installed, ensconced' (3BT la, 2ap, 2b). David wants the housing of the ark, that is, of the ark's god, to emulate the status of his own
splendid palace. Hence it is from this context that he puts his understated case to Nathan, who responds according to the king's evident
wishes. The structure which articulates the meagre plot that carries this
theme is of the simplest: 'when the king was installed in his house... he
said to Nathan... then Nathan said to the king' ("[^Qn 32T "O TT1
-pnn *? jn] -iDtn...)n] ^..."inî...in^n).

5.3.1.2. Verses 4-7
The plot is carried forward by 4-5a, narrating the immediate, unsolicited, and unexpected advent to Nathan of a divine word addressed to
David. The suspense and incipient conflict this introduces increases the
impact made by the polemic which follows. It also adds in another element which will emerge ever more clearly as thematic in Yahweh's
discourse and David's response: the independent word of Yahweh
objectively defining the divine will.
Yahweh's speech so introduced focuses immediately and starkly on
the thematic elements established in 1-3: 'house' (ITU), with its complementary verb 'inhabit, be installed' (DtfT), and its contrary 'tentdwelling' (p2?Ql îlK), Yahweh's term to replace David's pejorative
'tent-skins' (HJTT 2b0). In developing his theme Yahweh makes use of
two further terms, 'build' (HDD), the verb complement to 'house' (mi)
implicit, but never actually articulated, in 1-3; and the verb 'to move
around without constraint' ("f^nnn), contrary of the verb 'inhabit, be
installed' (3CT) and complement to the hendiadys 'tent-dwelling' (^HN
p$Q1). From these elements the first segment of Yahweh's speech (5b7) elaborates a scathing polemic built on a chiastic structure, in which
6a is the crossing point (see Figure 20):
5b
Is it that you will build me a settled house?
6b
but I was constantly moving around in a tent-dwelling
6a
for I have never lived in a house from the time I brought Israel up from Egypt to the present
7a
in all the time I moved around among the Israelites was there ever a word I spoke, etc.
Figure 20: Rhetorical Structure in 2 Sam. 7.5b-7
7b
why have you not built me a house of cedar?
214
This schema graphically shows the basic structure of this part of

Yahweh's argument. David is not to build Yahweh a house to settle in,
because Yahweh has never had one, nor ever asked for one. On the contrary, he has always retained the freedom to move around among all his
people. Thus what Yahweh rejects here is JT3 tout court, house =
temple in its entirety, because JT2 is through and through characterized
by 32T, and 32T is an infringement of his sovereign freedom of movement among his people ("f^Tinn).
Thus in the context of 5b-7 TQE^ in TQ^ FPD (5b) is an epexegetic,
not a restrictive, qualifier. That is, it makes explicit, in a logically (but
not rhetorically) redundant way, a quality presumed as inherent in bayit
= temple, namely its fixity, thereby encapsulating in one term the nub
of Yahweh's objection, spelt out in detail in vv. 6-7. If the term were
intended to be a restrictive qualifier of bayit = temple, as 13a retrospectively requires it to be, that is, singling out only 'dwellinghouse-temple'
as the object of Yahweh's strictures, then the pragmatics of discourse
demand that Yahweh's comment on 5b in 6-7 should explain why he
objects just to that particular kind of temple, so as to leave open the
possibility that a different kind of temple might be acceptable. But 6-7
patently oppose TOIzfr PP3, not as one kind of fixed temple against
other possible kinds, but as the whole category 'settled house' against
p2?Q1 îlN, '(portable) tent-dwelling', characterized by the verb "J^nnn,
'to move around freely'.116
Closely connected with his sovereign freedom of movement in 7a is
his sovereign word: on his sole initiative Yahweh commands whomsoever he chooses of his people to execute his will. This association
between Yahweh's freedom from the constraint of mi and the
sovereign freedom of the divine word is an ideologically revealing
moment in the text. We shall reflect further on this in Chapter 9.117
An important new element is made thematic in Yahweh's speech
here: his relationship with his people, Israel. It is among all the
Israelites, whom he brought up from Egypt (6a(3), that Yahweh has
always had the freedom to move around (7aa). The Israelites are his
people (7a(3), their leaders are appointed by Yahweh, their governance
116. TDIZ?1? does, however, later take on a restrictive function within the contrary
Yahweh sets up between 5b and 1 Ib, since, in contrast to ITS tout court in lib, the
qualifier TOE?1? clearly excludes the possibility of the metaphorical sense for rPD in
5b.
117. See Ch. 9 passim, esp. pp. 309-10.
5. David and Yahweh
215
is directed by his sovereign word (7). The clear discourse implicature is

that the housing of the ark is not a matter for David alone, it concerns
all of Yahweh's people. Yahweh's rhetoric thus appeals to categoricals
fundamental in his relations with his people Israel, upon which royal
pretension can never encroach.
Yahweh's reiteration here of the instruction to his spokesman to report
his word to David (8aa) makes a real, though not to be exaggerated,
demarcation from the preceding. Moreover, Yahweh effects an immediate change of topic, from David's proposed initiative for Yahweh to
Yahweh's ordering of David's career. But an underlying thread of
argument uniting this recital with what has gone before soon becomes
apparent: whose is the initiative in relations between Yahweh and
David? This is already signalled in the stressed 7 it was' 038 8afS)
contra 'is it youT (nn^H 5b) with which Yahweh begins this segment,
and becomes more and more evident in the series of six first person
verbs which catalogue Yahweh's initiative, past, present, and future,
through David for Israel.
As a recital of actions the basic structure of this segment is simple
linear narration, carried forward almost entirely by the series of first
person verbs linked by 1. Only towards the end of the segment is this
broken, by the negated futures (10a(3ba) and the comparative reference
to a previous era (1 Ob(3-11 act), and by Yahweh's summative-resumptive
statement on David's career (lla(3).
In this segment Yahweh develops further the theme of Israel as his
people. Yahweh makes clear throughout that his ordering of David's
career is for the benefit of his people. He chose David to become nagid
over his people (8a(3b) so as to bring about the welfare of his people
(lOaa), a welfare in peace and security of a kind his people have not
previously enjoyed (lOb-llaa). That is why he has given David rest
from enemies (lla(3).
The segment is bounded by the formality both of the third person performative utterance at the start (lib), and of the redundantly precise
narration of Nathan's delivering the oracle to David at the close (17).
Yahweh's speech here is explicatory, consisting of topic, comment, and
summary. The topic statement (llbp) and the concluding summary (16)
216
form a loose inclusio around the comment, sharing the keyword 'house
= dynasty' (ITS), and making an essentially similar affirmation, albeit
otherwise in different terms and at different length.
The topic statement is memorably compressed, but it is a compression in need of explanation and elaboration, not least in the context. For
it unexpectedly recurs to the topic 'house', left behind after the first
segment of Yahweh's discourse, and does so in a speech form clearly
modelled on Yahweh's initial utterance (5b). This strongly marked link
back to the beginning of Yahweh's speech draws Yahweh's argument
together in a way we shall explore in the next section.
The thematicity of 'house', re-established by the topic and summary
statements, is complemented in the comment by the parallel term 'your
offspring, descendants' ("p~l? 12a{3), with constant pronominal anaphora in 12ay-15. Thus, apart from the extraneous 13a[b], Yahweh's
discourse here is very tightly focused around this one issue.
Structurally, the explicatory comment is marked by the constant use
of two parallel, sometimes near-tautological, expressions (see Figure
21, p. 217). It will be observed that between the members of each set of
corresponding expressions, alongside lexemic variety, there is a notable
balance, both in their length and rhythm: the parallelisms border on the
higher style of poetry.118 This imbues Yahweh's words both with an
impressive ceremonial solemnity, and a careful, almost pedantically
legal, precision. Thus the highly combative polemic of the opening segment of Yahweh's speech has in this third segment entirely given way
to a more measured exposition, in keeping with the ceremonial pronouncement with which it begins (1 lb).119
With similar redundant parallelism, the concluding summary statement (v. 16) knits together topic and comment. Here again a telling, if
oblique, reference back to the first segment of Yahweh's speech is
made through the hendiadys 'your royal house' (ffD^QQl "[FTO) with
118. On this cf. Smith (1899: 299-301), and for 7.5b-7 Dus (1963: 47), but
attempts to find a full-blown poetic form in the text have to make unjustifiable
excisions. A possible explanation is that the text here draws, directly or indirectly,
upon materials in poetic form. But however that may be, it remains necessary to
take account of the rhetorical force of poetic or quasi-poetic parallelisms in what is
now prose discourse.
119. Scattered instances of this device may be detected in the earlier segments of
Yahweh's discourse: cf. 8a02 nun ]Q // Say ]xn inQ; lOacts TTI1KD31 // 10aa4
rnnn pan; and 6aa rr33 vatf* *? // 6b p&am ^nto f^nro rrrrNi. But in the
third segment it becomes a marked feature of the rhetoric.
12aa^
12aat
when your days are fulfilled
and you lie down with your fathers

12b
12ap
I will raise up your offspring after you
12ap2
I will establish their kingdom
12ar
who will issue from your loins
your seed after you
14ap
14acc
they will become sons to me
I will become a father to them

14bp2
14by
and with strokes (used by) humans
with a rod (used by) humans
15ba
15a
as I withdrew it from Saul
my loyalty will not depart from them

16b
16a
your royal house is firmly founded in perpetuity

before me
your throne is secure for ever
Figure 21: Parallel Expressions in 2 Sam. 7.12-16
218
the associated verb 'be sure' (]QK]) and its parallel 'be firmly grounded'
("I'D]) contra 'in a dwelling-tent' governed by the verb 'to move around'
("['pnnQ, pt0o:n ^HtO 6b). With a final ironic flourish, Yahweh thus
implicitly contrasts the secure grounding of the dynastic house he is
making for David with his own untrammelled freedom from fixity,
itself maintained against David's plan to build him a settled habitation
CrnEft TO 5b).
5.3.2. Disputatory Structure of 7.1-17
We observed above (5.3.1) that an inclusio encompasses this section
of the text, and notably that IT 3 is an important constituent in this
bracketing. From our consideration of the rhetoric of the individual
subsections (5.3.1.1-5.3.1.4) we have further seen how fundamental
this term is in the overall rhetoric of Yahweh's speech, dominating both
its first and third segments, and forging palpable links between Yahweh's utterances in each. It is evident, moreover, that the third segment
is some kind of answer to the first segment, as positive as the latter was
negative. But these transparent connections between the first and third
segments of Yahweh's discourse raise the question of the function
within the discourse of its second segment, in which r?D does not figure
at all.
To appreciate how organic is the second segment of Yahweh's
speech to the persuasive strategy of this section of the text we must
gain a sense of the section's overall structure. Its basic structure is that
of disputation, of the kind of disputation found in disputatory oracles
in the Hebrew Bible.120 Typically in such texts, Yahweh takes issue
with a proposal or claim (= thesis), normally attributed to a person or
group of people, disputing its validity (= dispute/refutation), and asserting his own counter-proposal/counter-claim (= counter-thesis).121 As an
120. A decade ago I discussed the structure of a number of 'disputation-oracles'
in the Hebrew Bible: see Murray (1987b). Though there working from a more
committed, though critically distanced, form-critical stance than I would now
defend, I continue to maintain the value of the tripartite analysis of disputation in
terms of thesis, dispute, and counter-thesis put forward in that article (see esp. 9799). Accordingly, I make use of it here. However, I now prefer to use the more
open label 'disputatory oracle', consistent with, on the one hand, the restricted form
of disputation manifest in such oracles, and, on the other, the variety of structures
they may assume.
121. For details see Murray (1987b), in general 98-99, and in detail on various
biblical examples, 103-14.
5. David and Yahweh
219
absolute divine word, mediated to the addressee(s) through a prophet,

the form admits of no real disputation, in the sense of continued dialogic reply and response between the opponents: Yahweh's refutation
admits of no counter-refutation, and his counter-thesis of no refutation!
In 2 Sam. 17.1-17 we have a situation where David puts forward a
proposal (thesis) which in an oracle Yahweh rejects (refutation), and
then counters with his own proposal (counter-thesis). The thesis proposal 'I (David) will build you (Yahweh) a cedar house' is strictly
never stated in so many words. It is first implied, rather obliquely, in
David's implicitly a fortiori argument put to Nathan in 2apyb. Here the
proposal is narratively contextualized to a particular situation in the
story of David, and given a specious approval by Nathan. Then it is
again implied, but more directly, in the rhetorical question (5b) with
which Yahweh begins his speech. But now the form of the question in
itself indicates Yahweh's rejection of the proposal. What then follows
in 6-7 is manifestly more than just a refutation of the proposal in its
particular reference to David. It amounts to Yahweh's total repudiation
of two implicated notions: (1) that Yahweh wants a fixed abode (6);
(2) that of their own initiative anybody could propose to build him one,
without a prior directive word from Yahweh (7)
Yahweh's counter-thesis proposal 'a house is what Yahweh will
make you' is baldly stated in llbp. Clearly this contraposes Yahweh's
initiative for David to David's rejected initiative for Yahweh. Hence for
Yahweh's own proposal to be logico-rhetorically122 effective as a
counter-thesis to David's proposal, Yahweh must clarify two issues:
(1) why it is appropriate that he alone take the initiative regarding a
house, and not David; (2) what kind of house he will make. The former
is explained by 8a(3-l la, the latter by 12,14-16.
Hence it is to serve this logico-rhetorical strategy that both 5b and
llbp have been framed in the way each has. Thus, because the major
strategic issue in the whole section is who will build, in 5b the main
stress falls on 'is ityouT (nnKH). Concomitant with that, as an operative difference between the thesis and counter-thesis, is what he will
build: hence the secondary stress on 'settled house' (?mtih PVQ) in 5b.
122. I use this rather clumsy term to implicate a logical component as essential to
the persuasiveness of the rhetoric, without necessarily asserting, as the alternative
expression 'logically and rhetorically' would appear to do, the strict cogency of the
logic. On the central role of a verbal equivocation in this logico-rhetorical argument, see below, pp. 222-23.
220
In llb(3 the same two related issues are still paramount. But, following
on from the refutation in 6-7 of the idea that anybody could take the
initiative from Yahweh, and following on from the account in 8a(3-lla
of Yahweh's continuous initiative through David for his people,
rhetorically the major stress now needs to fall, not on the who of the
counter-proposal, but on the what, since this now remains the crucial,
as yet undisclosed, element in Yahweh's proposal. Hence in llb(3 '
house' (fTO) is put first in the place of principal rhetorical stress, and
'Yahweh' (miT) at the end with secondary stress. Although the intended
beneficiaries of the respective 'houses' ('for me', ^ 5b; and 'for you',
"[^ llbfi) are implicated logically as contraries in this opposition, neither needs stressing rhetorically, simply because this opposition is a
contextually obvious implicature.123 But since 'house' (fTD) tout
court124 is not immediately transparent as a contrary to 'settled house'
(TDEJ'? rP3), the verb 'make' (il&ir llb(3) is employed to signal the
intended difference. Moreover, this verb also has ironic resonance with
3 a, where Nathan used exactly this verb in spuriously according Yahweh's endorsement to David's initiative.
In sum, then, in the terms of this dominant structure, in 1-3 we have,
in effect, the exposition of the thesis, that is, David's proposal. This
exposition, oblique and indirect for the reasons I have discussed in
detail in my close reading, is nonetheless quite clear enough for Yahweh. Thus his spirited disputation (5b-7), styled by 4-5a as an oracle,
soundly refutes the thesis. 8-1 la continue the dispute ('I it was' "*]
8ap), but moderate it into a less confrontational, more expository, vein,
which paves the way for Yahweh's counter-thesis (lib). This is then
123. It is of course not a logically necessary implication from the context, since
logically Yahweh could have set as contrary to 5b 'a house for X Yahweh will
make', where X stands for someone other than David. This is the difference
between strict logical implication and discourse implicature. In accord with the latter, the whole tenor of Yahweh's speech from 5b-l la has led the listener/reader to
expect, on such fundamental pragmatic principles as relevance and proportion in
discourse, that any new initiative Yahweh announces will be one that is both contrary to the rejected initiative of David for Yahweh, and relevant to David, since he
is Yahweh's addressee, and more especially since he has been the main focus of the
series of divine initiatives detailed in 8a-l la. Thus the 'me/you' contrary has been
persistently conveyed to the listener/reader throughout Yahweh's speech, and does
not need to be made rhetorically salient here.
124. Presumably no obvious epexegetic qualifier, equivalent to TQCD1?, but
defining of a dynastic house, was available for use here.
5. David and Yahweh
221
set out in detail in the counter-exposition (12,14-16), and the section is

rounded off with Yahweh's response being reported to David (17). We
may represent this structure in the following schematic diagram (Figure
n\.
Figure 22: Narrative and Disputatory Structure in 2 Sam. 7.1-17
Thus each subsection of 1-17 has a transparent function in the discourse-logical development of this strategy of persuasion. Moreover,
awareness of the structure in this rhetoric sharpens awareness of the
relations between its subsections. Thus not only is the counter-thesis
the contrary of the thesis (in the form in which Yahweh makes it
explicit 5b), but so also the counter-exposition can be seen to run contrary to the exposition implicit in 1-3. In 1-3 David, his power unchallenged, his enjoyment of his exalted status uninterrupted, proposes to
do something to benefit Yahweh. In 12, 14-16 Yahweh explains that he
will do something to benefit David's descendants, when David's power
and enjoyment have been swallowed up in death (12a). With Yahweh
they will enjoy a special relationship (14-15), their royal power he will
firmly establish (12b, cf. 13b).125 Hence the kind of house Yahweh will
125. In Ps. 89.20-38[19-37] the exposition of the divine promise is all in terms of
222
make for David will precisely have the permanent fixedness (16) he
repudiated in the kind of house David proposed for him.
Then further, the continued disputation-cum-exposition 8ba-lla is
more closely linked with the disputation 5b-7 than may immediately be
evident. In fact, the thread of argument which runs through the two
subsections is recursive, that is, in 8bct-l 1 Yahweh picks up on most of
the major points from 5b-7, in reverse order, and recontextualizes them
to advance his argument. This may be schematized in parabolic form as
follows (Figure 23):
Figure 23: Recursive Structure in 2 Sam. 7.5b-l Ib
Thus in Sapyb Yahweh now particularizes to David as ndgid his earlier

more comprehensive reference to those he appoints to shepherd his
people Israel (7a(3). Then in 9a he applies specifically to David's career
his previous general statement about his moving among the Israelites
(7aa). 10a implicitly contrasts the secure stability of residence Yahweh
is creating for his people through the career of David with the untrammelled freedom of movement he reserves for himself (6aa,b). But these
recursive references back have actually moved the argument forward to
the point where Yahweh can make the last and starkest of all, the
opposing of his new initiative of a permanent stable house for David
(llbp) over against David's rejected initiative of a permanent fixed
house for Yahweh (5b). The argument has reached its final, climactic,
stage.
This stark opposition of one sense of 'house' against another,
exploits a verbal equivocation available in the Hebrew bay it,126 and
what Yahweh will do for 'his servant David' (21 [20]). But this different slant is
exactly in line with the different rhetorical strategy operating in this psalm, where a
descendant whose power is under dire threat appeals to Yahweh to honour the
covenant made with his faithful forefather (39-52[38-51]). On this see in more
detail my Claim for Power (forthcoming).
126. While this is ultimately an arbitrary feature of the Hebrew language, it is not
so arbitrary that parallel examples cannot be found in other languages. The same
equivocation is possible not only with English 'house', where influence from the
translated Hebrew of the Bible might be suspected, but also in the Greek oiida, and
5. David and Yahweh
223
explicable within the discourse logic as the opposing of a metaphorical

against a literal, or more strictly a metonymic, sense of the term. The
section begins with a literal house, if of an exceptional kind, that is,
David's cedar-palace, in which he is living. It is David's proposal
which makes the shift from the literal sense 'house = fixed human habitation' to the metonymic 'house = fixed divine habitation'. The latter
usage is metonymic because, while the term still refers to a fixed physical building similar to a human habitation, and thus shows clear contiguity in that area of its meaning, the way in which the god could be
thought to inhabit (3CT) this 'house' must have appeared to be different
from ordinary human habitation, even to the users of this speech form.
When we turn to Yahweh's counter-proposal, however, where 'house'
refers to the aggregate of David's ruling descendants (house = dynasty),
it clearly has no direct reference at all to a physical building, but only
to successive members of a related group who might notionally occupy
the same physical building, and thus bayit here is entirely
metaphorical.127
The rhetoric in 7.1-17, then, in its barest essentials, promotes the
acceptance of a polar opposition, thus: not this (2-3,5b), for these reasons (6-7), but, for these further reasons (8a(3-lla), that (llb,12,14-16).
This opposition is exclusive: Yahweh's initiative vanquishes David's
from the field entirely. How is this rhetoric prosecuted? As we have
seen, principally by the development of a persuasive line of argument.
But behind the persuasiveness of polemical rhetoric lurks the dogmatic
appeal to divine authentication. Indeed, the very promotion of the
approved pole of the opposition as expressing the authentic will of Yahweh itself stigmatizes the rejected pole as inauthentic: Nathan's oracle
(4-17) demolishes Nathan's assurance (3).
the Latin domus, as used by indigenous authors not subject to influence by the
Hebrew Bible. These parallels in usage are probably due to the operation of the
same metonymic/metaphoric extensions of meaning (on this see next note) in the
languages concerned.
127. Of course, from a different point of view this metaphorical usage of IT 3
could be regarded as metonymic. That is, it may well have arisen from the metonymic extension of the reference of JTD from the physical dwelling to its human
inhabitants, and the further extension of that reference, also metonymically, to its
notional inhabitants over several generations. But the dynamics of the shifts in
reference in our text, first to house = temple and then from that to house = dynasty,
mask this inferable contiguity in referential shifts.
224
Thus this further opposition, divine word versus no divine word, is

dramatized in the person of Nathan. Nathan the prophet, acting as 'the
king's' court functionary, and on the basis of no divine word, speciously vouchsafes Yahweh's approval to David's initiative (3). Nathan
the prophet, acting as faithful intermediary for Yahweh's prophetic
word, repudiates David's initiative and authenticates Yahweh's (4-5a,
8aa, 17). But this dramatic form of promotion also dovetails into the
argument itself, where the rhetoric of inauthentic versus authentic is
pursued. Thus the very first utterance of Yahweh, marked as such by
the formula mrf "1QK HD, 'thus says Yahweh', is Yahweh's dismissal
of David's initiative (5a0b): what Nathan without a divine word had
falsely authenticated is declared inauthentic by Yahweh's initial word.
Then Yahweh deftly exposes how inauthentic it is through the rhetorical device of the hypothetical prophetic word asking for a cedar-house,
the word that never was (v. 7). Finally, Yahweh's counter-initiative is
uniquely marked as an authentic and effective divine word by being
given the form of a ceremonial third person performative utterance
(lib). The rhetorical impact of this three-pronged attack on the inauthentic and promotion of the authentic inheres also in the verbal
similarity of the three prongs, as the following tabulation reveals
(Figure 24):
Figure 24: Parallels between 2 Sam. 7.5b,7b,l Ibp
5.3.3. Rhetorical Structure of 7.18-29

The three sections of David's prayer each broadly correspond in turn to
one of three major elements common in petitionary suits: (1) self-depreciation of the petitioner (18-21); (2) laudation of the person petitioned
5. David and Yahweh
225
(22-24); pleading of the suit (25-29).128 Although no rigid ordering of

these elements need be followed in a suit, it is obvious that the given
order is strategic, both logically and rhetorically. Certainly in our
prayer everything else leads up to the petition (first in 25afft>), and petition forms its climactic conclusion (29). Thus that David's prayer is
petitionary is clearly a fundamental part of its rhetoric.
Yet David's suit is not for something, the granting of which by Yahweh is a matter of any real doubt. On the contrary, David's prayer is,
avowedly and repeatedly,129 a response to the prior divine word, a plea
for the fulfilment of a promise guaranteed by the immutable reliability
of Yahweh's word (28-29). But in that case, why is David's response
so clearly structured as a petitionary suit? Why not a prayer of thanksgiving for Yahweh's benevolence to himself and to his house? A spirit
of gratefulness to Yahweh does indeed breathe through the whole
prayer, notably 'as if this was not enough.. .you have also spoken...'
(...D3 mini nst Til? ppm 19a), 'you have done all these great acts'
(DKTn n^T13n ''PD PIN JT&U 2la[3), and 'you have promised your servant
this benevolence' (DKTn rmon n "["m? ? -mm 28b). Yet the fact
remains that, whereas explicit petition gives the prayer its dominant
structure, nowhere within it does any explicit thanksgiving terminology
occur.
It is in its graphic portrayal of a fundamental change in the relationship of David to Yahweh that the rhetorical point of this particular
shaping of the prayer lies. If David's prayer were shaped solely or
mainly by thanksgiving, then this would too easily convey a rhetoric,
yes, of a grateful monarch rendering his due to his tutelary god, but still
mixed with strong overtones of a monarch who has also received his
due from the royally sponsored deity. A David deferring utterly to
Yahweh is essential to clinch the persuasiveness of Yahweh's speech,
by demonstrating a David totally transformed from the covertly self128. These three elements are standard in psalms of petition, such as the socalled 'psalms of lament'. Psalm 22 provides a good example, especially its opening section: petition 2-3[l-2], laudation 4-6[3-5], self-depreciation 7-9[6-8]. They
can also be observed at various points in the suit of the woman of Tekoa to David,
2 Sam. 14.4-17, and notably in 15 (self-depreciation), 16 (petition), 17 (laudation).
I particularly cite an instance of prayer to God and of suit to a powerful person
(especially a king) to draw attention to the point that the latter is the analogue in
human experience for the former. This imparts a special irony to our present
example.
129. See the references given in n. 133 below.
226
promoting grasper of 6.1-7.3. Thus 'the king' must abase himself

before Yahweh as Yahweh's subject, to plead for what hitherto he has
been scheming to bring within his own control. Only thus is royal pretension seen to defer wholly to the supremacy of divine prerogative. It
is a master stroke of rhetoric to have suppressed in Yahweh's speech
any overt declaration of the promised dynastic house as blessing, and to
have kept it back to the very last words of David's prayer. For there
(29) with reiterated emphasis David cedes to Yahweh's sole
sovereignty the blessing on his house.
In thus ceding sovereignty over it David defines the promised blessing of his house as 'to be perpetually "before you"' ("f]S^ dr^xb fllTl'?
29aa). A few sentences earlier David had coordinated the secure establishment of his house 'before you' (26b) with exaltation of 'the name of
Yahweh of Hosts God over Israel', that is, the god of the ark. Moreover, the scene-setting for his prayer seated David 'before Yahweh'
(18a), and therefore, by contextual implicature, before the ark still
installed in its simple tent (cf. 6.17). Thus David, who earlier boasted
exaggeratedly to Michal of being 'before Yahweh' (6.21), all the while
scheming to secure control of the ark and the blessing of its god for his
house, now, in an audience with the sovereign Yahweh of Hosts, god of
the ark (iTliT "'HS'? 18a), acknowledges that being kept under the gracious surveillance of Yahweh ("pS4? 29a(3) is itself a blessing which it
is only Yahweh's to grant.130
5.4. Ideology of Polemic in 7.1-29
This final section of a long chapter is intended to distil from the preceding discussion a more general understanding of what this manifestly
powerful rhetoric in 2 Samuel 7 is driving at. What is the purpose of a
polemic which contrives, through a play on the equivocal word bay it, to
set an initiative of Yahweh for David, destined to be fulfilled after his
lifetime, over against an initiative of David for Yahweh, rejected as
never to be fulfilled? What message is being conveyed through the parallel play on the equivocal role of Nathan, to stigmatize David's initiative as totally bereft of divine authority, but to authenticate Yahweh's
130. We considered above the thematicity in 2 Sam. 6 of the expression '3S1?

mrr, and noted there something of the range of meaning it comprehends. See Ch. 4,
pp. 123-24 n. 39, and the discussion in 4.2.3, pp. 142-44, 4.4, pp. 157-58.
5. David and Yahweh
227
by the very word of Yahweh himself?131 The purpose is persuasion, the

message a particular ideology. Through this means the text effectively
mediates to the envisaged reader a particular view of the scope of
David's role in Yahweh's governance of Israel and the nature of the
relationship that should subsist between them.
Through the polemical rhetoric a conflict is set up between two views
of David's leadership over Israel and what each entails, that of David
himself, and that of Yahweh. We will consider in some detail in subsequent chapters the ideology of these views. It suffices here to grasp the
essentials in the presentation of the ideological conflict, and a preliminary understanding of how the conflict is resolved. This can most easily
be conveyed through the following schematic diagram (Figure 25,
p. 228).
In this diagrammatic representation I apply, in an analogical way, the
mathematical conventions that plottings on the horizontal axis to the
left of the vertical represent negative values, those to the right positive
values, and those on the vertical axis below the horizontal represent
negative values, those above the horizontal positive values. At the centre of the diagram on the intersection of the two axes is the term 'house'
(mi) in its most literal sense. The horizontal axis plots its metonymic
usage, 'house = temple', the vertical its metaphoric, 'house = dynasty'.
These, together with their negative extensions 'no temple' and 'no dynasty' respectively, create four quadrants. But only three of the four are
actually operative, since the ideological space bounded by the combination 'temple-no dynasty' plays no role in our text.
Starting from literal house at the intersection of the axes, the ideological view the text projects on to David is plotted as a diagonal in the
upper right-hand quadrant, since it is characterized by the combination
131. Herrmann (1953-54: 59 = 1986: 137-38) recognized in this equivocal role
of Nathan a certain problem for his analogy with the Egyptian 'royal novel' texts,
but penetrated nonetheless to some understanding of its ideological function within
our text: 'So hat es den Anschein, als ob mil der anfanglichen Zustimmung Nathans
und der folgenden Wendung der Dinge, die Jahwe veranlasste, menschliche
Erwagungen und absoluter Gotteswille gegeniibertreten sollen...nicht der Konig,
sondern der Absolutheitsanspruch Jahwes herrscht, vor dem selbst der Konig auf
die Stufe des "DJJ herabsinken muss' (1953-54: 59 = 1986: 138: 'In the initial
agreement of Nathan and its later reversal by Yahweh, we get the impression that
human calculations had to collide with the absolute will of God...it is not the king
who holds sway, but Yahweh's absolute authority, and before this even the king
has to descend to the level of "OS?').
Figure 25: Schema of Ideological Polemic in 2 Sam. 7.1-17
5. David and Yahweh
229
'temple-dynasty'. David's implied overt intention is to build a temple

for Yahweh as the royal tutelary god. His implicated covert intention is
to secure thereby control of the blessing of Yahweh as royally-sponsored god for himself and his house, that is, for his dynasty. His aim is
to further his royal pretension, represented in our text by the term
melek. Both the narrative framework and the polemical argument (especially v. 7) clearly implicate that David has no authentic divine warrant
for his plan.
The diametrically opposing view is that expounded by Yahweh in
5b-lla, accordingly plotted here in the opposite quadrant, the lower
left. Yahweh explicitly repudiates temple in 5b-7, hence this view must
occupy the space bounded by the 'no temple' end of the horizontal axis.
Then in his reference to leaders appointed by himself from any of the
tribes of Israel (7), and in his espousal of the term nagid to define
David's leadership over Yahweh's people (8b), Yahweh implicitly
takes a 'no dynasty' line.132 Hence this ideological view is plotted as a
diagonal below the horizontal axis. This diagonal characterizes the
divine prerogative at its most uncompromising, warranted by the divine
word.
However, the strategy of the text is to effect a persuasive reconciliation between these diametrical contraries. In this process most ground
by far has to be conceded by David: he must resign all initiative to
Yahweh, and defer his royal pretension to the prerogative of Yahweh.
Thus his prayer (18-29) eloquently abandons all house-building to Yahweh, and commits the future of his dynasty to the sovereign exercise of
the divine blessing. But in a more covert way, cleverly disguised by the
equivocal play on fTD, Yahweh also cedes ground from the position set
out in 5b-lla. He embraces dynasty as a means to secure the future
welfare of his people, and, by implicature from his exposition of the
promise of dynasty (12,14-16), he concedes it royal status. Thus the
reconciled position occupies the space in the upper left-hand quadrant,
bounded by the 'no temple'133 and 'dynasty' axes. This reconciled
132. On the evidence for this claim see in detail below Ch. 8.
133. I have set out in detail above (5.2.1.4; 5.3.1.2) the evidence which shows
13a(b) to be thoroughly extraneous to the prevailing rhetoric in 7.1-17. Here let us
further note that in all of David's prayer, which makes some ten references to Yahweh's promise of dynasty (18ba, 19a(3, 21a, 25a, 25b, 26b, 27a, 28b, 29a, 29b),
there is not even the merest hint of a reference to Yahweh's affirmation in 13a that
David's 'offspring' will build a temple. In fact, David uses the term ITU, 'house',
only in reference to the promised dynasty, and in that connection he uses only rV3,
230
position is thoroughly authenticated by the word of Yahweh (17, 18-29

passim).
Clearly, this summary account raises further questions, in particular
questions about the agenda underlying the promoting of such an ideological view. In order to explore that further, we must probe its background in more detail (Chs. 7 and 8 below). But first in the next chapter
we shall take a broad overview of the whole of our stretch of text,
whose detail we have examined in depth in this and the two preceding
chapters.
never ITIT, 'offspring'. This is only to be expected, given IT)T as the individuating
collective which in 12, 14-16 refers to members of the dynasty seriatim, andlTD as
the aggregating collective which refers to them in toto. David in his prayer is concerned with Yahweh's promise to the dynasty in toto, and clearly nothing in what
David heard from Yahweh has moved him to differentiate the aggregrate into any
of its individual members, or to refer to a temple for Yahweh to be built by any one
of them.
Chapter 6
YAHWEH AND DAVID AT HOME AND AT WAR:

PLOT AND THEME IN 2 SAMUEL 5.17-7.29
The preceding three chapters have set out a reading of the three main
sections of our stretch of text at considerable length and in great detail.
The purpose of this much briefer chapter is twofold. First, in prescinding from the detail, to give a summary overview of the results of the
detailed discussion. And, second, by doing so to develop further our
understanding of how the main points of plot and theme contribute to
the ideological thrust of this text. Thus, although this chapter will again
go over ground we have already traversed, it will do so with an eye to
viewing the path we have followed from start to finish, to discerning
the sweep of the terrain as an integrated whole.1 This overview of the
whole unit, therefore, will seek to sharpen our perception of its thematic focus on the problem of difference and deference between David
and Yahweh. When at war in 5.17-25 David seems most at home with
Yahweh, but his return home in 2 Samuel 6 and 7 is to a kind of war
with Yahweh. Yet exposure of this hostile difference that, for the
reader, surfaces in David's advancement of his royal pretension by
requisitioning the ark, keeps being deferred by Yahweh's apparent
complaisance in David's covert machinations. Finally, however, Yahweh aggressively asserts the divine prerogative over David, through a
prophetic word whose supreme authority is unquestioningly deferred to
by the king.
1. Since the assertions I make in this chapter all arise from and depend upon
the detailed discussion in the preceding chapters, and since it would greatly encumber the text of this chapter to continually cross-reference to those chapters, the
reader is here given a general referral to turn to the appropriate parts of those chapters to find the relevant discussion.
232
6.2. Plot and Thematic Development within 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29

6.2.1. Chapters, Verses 17-25
On the surface 5.17-25 is a straightforward account of two royal battles.
In the first scene (17-21) the king receives a wholly conventional
assurance of divine support and duly achieves victory over the enemy.
David piously attributes the victory to divine action, and Yahweh's
prowess as divine warrior is demonstrated by the capture of the
enemy's gods. Here, then, we are given a cameo of a mutually
beneficial relationship, but one in which Yahweh's role, though real, is
one of reactive support for his protege. The second cameo scene in
5.22-25 parallels the structure of the first, with David again consulting
his tutelary god and thereby gaining a divinely-ensured victory. But this
time, though still reactive, Yahweh rejects David's plan of another
direct frontal attack for his own plan of a rear attack led by a divine
theophany. Hence there emerges in the narrative some tension, however
minimal, between David's apparent power to control their relationship
and the evident power of Yahweh to decisively shape events.
In the action of 2 Sam. 5.17-25 neither the ark nor Yahweh under his
special title Yahweh of Hosts figures directly.2 Both, however, are prefigured through Yahweh's role here as the victorious divine warriorking.3 Thus a theophany of Yahweh as divine warrior is described by
David in the first victory (5.20), and by Yahweh himself in the second
(5.23-24). Yet in each case the narrative, in making David the subject
of the decisive verbs ('he struck them down', Uy\ 20a; 'he struck down
the Philistines', DTICJ^B HN "pi 25ba) makes quite clear that, whatever
it is that Yahweh does, the victories nonetheless follow directly from
David's own actions. Hence David can find here evidence enough of
enjoying the support and blessing of the divine warrior, to pursue a plan
to institutionalize that support and blessing for his royal house. Indeed,
precisely through these victories the way has been opened for David to
do just that. For, on the one hand, the two victories have removed the
threat to his position as 'king over Israel' (^"l&T ^1? f'pQ 5.17aa, cf.
12), and, on the other, they have freed the ark from Philistine control,
2. It should be noted, however, that in the reflective summary which immediately precedes this unit the reader has been told that 'Yahweh God of Hosts' has
been with David in his progressive rise to power (5.10).
3. A point recognized by Seow (1989: 80, 91).
6. Yahweh and David at Home and at War
233
allowing it to be removed from Kiriath Jearim/Baal Judah, and to be

enshrined in David's royal capital.
Moreover, his own role in relation to Yahweh's in the two victories
may easily have served to encourage David into thinking that this warrior-god is amenable to his manipulation. Indeed, Yahweh's role in the
first incident, where the divine response (19b) merely confirms David's
inquiry (19a) in precisely his own terms,4 fosters the idea. If in the second incident Yahweh takes a stronger line, rejecting David's plan for
his own (23a(3b), nonetheless it too remains, no less than the first incident, a response to David's prior inquiry (23aa).5 Thus, on the face of
it, Yahweh cedes to David the initiative in their relationship. Then further, the fact that in both instances the victories actually follow from his
own actions can only strengthen David in the conviction that he also
controls the relationship's executive power. Hence we have here a hint
of potential conflict, between a David who, to secure the future of his
kingship over Israel, will attempt to institutionalize control over the
power of this divine warrior-king, and a Yahweh who, to secure the
future of Israel as his people, has his own plan for sovereign control
over David.
But if David's removal of the ark is to be seen as an act of ambition and
intended divine manipulation, why does Yahweh seemingly go along
with David's plan? The answer to this lies in the difference between
David's overt actions and his covert intentions, a difference betrayed to
the reader in the course of 2 Samuel 6. As we saw in Chapter 4 above,
the ceremonial procession of the ark is a triumphal progress, both by
the human king David parading prized 'booty' taken from the defeated
enemy, and by the divine warrior-king Yahweh ritually repossessing
his liberated territory. Thus the opening sequence of 2 Samuel 6, as the
victorious return in ceremony of the divinely aided hero from his rout
of the Philistines, carries forward the plot of 5.17-25. From this point of
4. There is thus a notable irony between Yahweh's apparently slavish avowal
of David's plan here, and his later decided disavowal of Nathan's slavish support of
the king's plan in 7.3.
5. This rejection, qua rejection of David's plan, foreshadows that of 7.5-7, and
hence, taken together, the two, closely similar, episodes in 5.17-25 in some sense
foreshadow the initial apparent acceptance and later rejection of David's plan in
7.1-7.
234
view, nothing is more obvious than that Yahweh should consent to

David's removal of the ark from its place of prolonged sequestration.
Hence the fact that David does not consult Yahweh on the matter,
though strongly implicated through juxtaposition with his double consultation in 5.17-25, is at this point not unduly obtrusive. Furthermore,
the place to which the ark is to be removed is also at this point not once
mentioned. Both are silences of the text that take on significance only
in retrospect.
The full thematic import of the ark's journey in 6.1-1 la, however,
can only be appreciated by the reader's being aware of the striking
ways this account parallels the story of the ark in 1 Samuel 4-6. Thus
the ark's progress in each case is initiated by Yahweh's effective intervention (2 Sam. 5.17-25; cf. 'the hand of Yahweh' in 1 Sam. 5-6). In
each, the ark is transported on a new cart drawn by oxen (2 Sam 6.3, 6;
cf. 1 Sam. 6.7-12), a quite distinctive feature in common, since elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, including 6.13 below, the ark is carried by
human bearers.6 Israelite rejoicing at its progress in both instances is
only to be expected (2 Sam. 6.5; cf. 1 Sam. 6.13), but savage and inexplicable7 divine intervention in both (2 Sam. 6.6-8 cf. 1 Sam. 6.19), and
the ark's resultant unceremonial8 diversion into an obscure repository
(2 Sam. 6.10; cf. 1 Sam. 6.21-7.1), are again two quite striking
parallels.
This series of sustained parallels, which has driven the plot in 6.11 la to a point ominously similar to that reached in the earlier narrative,
invokes the earlier story as context for interpretation of our present text.
There Israel, without effective control of the ark, and deprived of direction by the doom that had overtaken the priestly Elide dynasty (1 Sam.
4.12-19), spend 20 mournful years bereft of the gracious presence of
Yahweh (1 Sam. 7.2). Hence, despite the evidence of divine favour in
David's present victories over the Philistines (5.17-25) which restore to
Israel control of the ark, in contrast to the inauspiciousness of the
Israelite defeat at Ebenezer which resulted in its capture by the
6. In the priestly regulations, Num. 4.5-6, 15; in the Deuteronomic traditions
Deut. 10.8; 31.25; Josh. 3.3, etc; in the Chronistic traditions 1 Chron. 15.2, etc.
7. Compare the mixture of puzzlement and fear evinced by the rhetorical
questions in 1 Sam. 6.20a|3b with David's reaction in 2 Sam. 6.9.
8. In 1 Sam. 7.1 the narrative, which has previously recorded the burning of
the new cart and the offering of the oxen (6.14), suggests an altogether low-key
journey from Beth Shemesh to Kiriath Jearim.
235
Philistines (1 Sam. 4), these parallel features in the ark's journey in

2 Sam. 6.7-11 appears to presage a similarly dismal outcome for David
and Israel. There the long years of spiritual barrenness for Israel were
brought to an end by the prophetic intervention of Samuel, independently of the ark (1 Sam. 7.3-4).9 How will Yahweh deal with the situation here, where David threatens to make the ark, and Yahweh himself
as god of the ark, 'captive' to his monarchic ambitions over Israel?
First indications of an answer to this question come in a further, even
more evocative, parallel drawn by our text. David himself is enormously struck by a similarity between Yahweh's involvement in striking down Uzza (6.7) and in his own earlier striking down the Philistines
(5.20). So struck is David by the similarity, that he reflects on the second incident in terms closely resembling those of his reflection on the
first, and similarly bestows a memorializing place name which shares
the central term 'surge' (j*""B 6.8) with the place name in the first incident. But the angry puzzlement (6.8-10) which David's reflections
induce express his frustration that Yahweh could, in analogous actions,
evidently act so in the interests of David in the one incident, and so
against them in the other. His resultant fear of Yahweh (9a) is a subliminal recognition that Yahweh is more than the obliging tutelary deity of
royal sponsorship David has been seduced into thinking.
Thus, at the end of this first episode in 2 Samuel 6, the reader is made
aware of a serious strain in relations between David and Yahweh, a
strain which has resulted in the disruption of David's plans, and in so
doing, threatens, on the analogy with the earlier ark narrative, to plunge
Israel with him into a period of spiritual barrenness, deprived of Yahweh's presence and blessing. Precisely here, in making the reader privy
to David's angry musing on the thwarting of his plans (6.9-10), the text
betrays just how much the ark's journey is intended to serve David's
self-interest. First, so far as he is concerned, he is bringing it up 'to
myself ("17K 9b), 'to the city of David' (111 TI? Û lOa). Thus the first
time the goal has been mentioned in the text is in David's 'secret' personal reflections, underlining its reference to his personal interests. Yet,
9. Admittedly, the words of Samuel to Israel are not explicitly presented as a
prophetic oracle. But the earlier narrative has massively built up Samuel's
prophetic credentials (3.1, 2-14; 3.19-4.1), and this summons to return to Yahweh
is characteristically prophetic. Despite his early devotion to the ark-cult, once
Samuel's prophetic credentials are fully established, he evinces no interest in the
ark.
236
second, precisely here in David's interior monologue and the note of

his consequent action (lOb) there is an emphatic shift in designation of
the ark, from 'the ark of God' (6.2aa, 3aa, 4ap, 6ba, 7b) or simply 'the
ark' (6.4b), to 'the ark of Yahweh', three times within a short compass
(9b,10a, and by pronominal anaphora lOb). Thus the reader is strikingly
made aware that the ark's being Yahweh's ark is present to the mind of
David as he ponders what to do. But, third, fully aware of this and of
Yahweh's onerous intervention in the ark's journey, David consults
only with himself, and not with Yahweh. The initial silences of the narrative, concerning David's failure to consult Yahweh and concerning
the goal of the ark's journey, begin to take on their full significance.
Notwithstanding, having thus evoked in the reader so strong a sense
of an estranging difference in intention between David and Yahweh,
the continuation of the narrative in the second episode of 2 Samuel 6
defers it again. The disquiet about proceedings elicited by vv. 9-10
becomes overlayed for the moment by David's joy at being able to
resume the ark's journey, and his verve in completing it. But beneath
this surface harmony of happy success readerly doubt about David's
motives continues to nag, like a discordant pedal note. It makes itself
heard when David presumes to regard, again without consulting him,
Yahweh's blessing of the household of Obed Edom as a sign to proceed
with plans Yahweh had earlier so drastically aborted. Yet prima facie
this ought to have been evidence that Yahweh was happy for the ark to
remain where it was. Will blessing attend David's wilful intervention?
The discordant note sounds more obtrusively in the Lucianic plus in
6.12, which, in another piece of tell-tale interior monologue, betrays
how much David is still focused on his monarchic self-interest, and not
the concerns of Yahweh. Manifestly, the ark confers on its possessor
the blessing of the god of the ark, and since for 'the king David' (12a)
this blessing of the divine warrior-king, Yahweh of Hosts, is an indispensable means to the realization of his royal pretensions, he must
needs gain control of it for himself and his house.
The note of doubt continues to sound ominously in the background,
at the very instant of climax, when the ark enters the city of David
(16a). For, just at this moment of triumph for 'the king David' (16ba),
the reader is alerted to an aloof Michal, daughter of Saul, watching in
contempt his extravagant leading of the ark-procession, alienated from
her husband and all his royal pretensions (16). Though the reader is not
thereby moved to identify with Michal, nonetheless the projection
237
through her of disavowal of David and his proceedings continues to

stimulate the reader's own underlying misgivings.
Notwithstanding the persistence of this discordant note of doubt,
nothing prevents David from installing the ark in the city of David in
the tent he had ready to receive it (17a), and nothing prevents him further from taking charge of the blessing in the name of Yahweh of
Hosts, so as to dispense this to the people (18b). It therefore appears
that David is succeeding in his covert plan, despite the earlier savage
intervention of Yahweh. That appears now as no more than a temporary
incommoding of David. The deity of the ark, after so capriciously
manifesting independence, has subsided into amenableness toward the
king and his royal pretensions.
Yet has he? For when David comes to the crowning move of his
monarchic plan, the bestowal on his own household of the blessing of
the divine warrior-king Yahweh of Hosts, he is thwarted by a scathing
greeting (20) from the very person who should have welcomed the
plan's fulfilment with a blessing of her own: his consort, Michal, putative queen mother to a monarchic heir. This meeting, in the third episode of 2 Samuel 6, abruptly evolves into a slanging match which
shamelessly makes public the estranged relations between husband and
wife (20-22). Although it culminates in such fateful consequences for
the queen (23), the sordid domestic altercation gives opportunity to lay
bare fundamental thematic issues which have been latent in the text up
to this point. For their contention is all about status and standing: about
David's standing in the eyes of the royal 'daughter of Saul', in the eyes
of his own kingly ambition, and allegedly in those of his monarchic
subjects, Israel. Under the provocation of Michal's aristocratic scorn
David makes appeal, in an unintentionally revealing way, to his
divinely appointed status 'before Yahweh'.
The context within which Michal assesses David's conduct is that of
a king before his subjects, spitefully represented by the meanest of
them ('in the eyes of your lackeys' serving-girls!', V"QI? milQK T!^
20bp). Hence Michal lacerates the 'king of Israel' (20b), with the same
regal disdain already evinced in v. 16, for demeaning his status by orgiastic behaviour. That the arrow was aimed truly is clear from the second part of David's retort (22). But first David pompously asserts an
entirely different context for his actions (21). His context is at once
more exalted and more humble than Michal's, and one calculated to put
his actions far beyond the scope of her criticism. It is more exalted, in
238
that he maintains his actions have been played out, not before the
people as his royal subjects, but 'before Yahweh' as his sovereign god
(mrf "OS1? in rhetorically balanced repetition 21). It is more humble, in
that he avows that his designated role is not that of a melek, a king over
his subject people as Michal would have it, but that of the divinelyappointed nagid, 'leader over Yahweh's people', a role for which no
less than Yahweh chose him, and for which he chose him above
Michal's father Saul and all his house.
But to this ostensibly high-minded theological affirmation David
cannot resist adding an all-too-human riposte which concedes nothing
to Michal in bitter vituperation (22). But David's scorching parody of
Michal, intended to convey how little her view of him means to him in
comparison with that of the meanest of the serving-girls with which she
taxes him, unwittingly betrays how important to him is his standing as
melek. Indeed, David thinks to have it both ways, to be able to play the
lowly role of Yahweh's nagid ('I shall abase myself.. .to the point of
being lowly in my own eyes', TIO t?S$...'Tlt?p]1 22a), while gaining
the exalted honour of a melek ('but with the serving-girls. ..let me
increase my honour!', miDK...mrmn Din 22b).
The Michal of our text offers no reply. But she has no need to, since,
for all their disdain, Michal's own words and the retort they provoke,
have for the reader already tellingly exposed the profound contradiction
between David's publicly proclaimed role of nagid and his private pretensions to that of melek. Her words lay bare what David would suppress, perhaps even from his own cognizance, namely, that the role of
melek demands of him attitudes and conduct incompatible with those of
nagid. We have seen how in v. 21 David seeks totally to align his cultic
behaviour before the ark, that is, 'before Yahweh', with his divinely
appointed status of nagid. Yet the uses of the expression 'before Yahweh' earlier in our text (iT)iT ^S1? 5a, 14a, 17b) tell a different story.
True, in 5 a, while the ark is still under the care of previously installed
cultic attendants, in his ritual actions 'before Yahweh' David is associated with 'all the house of Israel' as the leading member of the people,
not identified by a particular title. But come the resumed journey of the
ark in the second episode, David has assumed the garb of the ark-priest
(14b) and clearly himself discharges the leading priestly function (13b,
14, 17b-20a), while also exercising a leadership of the people now
identified as monarchic (melek 15; cf. 12a, 20b). Thus David's pretensions, in the first episode restrained behind conduct consistent with
239
being Yahweh's nagid, in the second increasingly assert themselves as

royal through and through.
But this stark exposure of the disparity between David's theologically impeccable avowal of a role subservient to Yahweh as nagid over
his people, and his increasingly evident ambitious grasping after the
status of a dynastic melek over Israel (cf. 20bp), in control of the dynastic god and his blessing, provokes the readerly question, what has happened to the god who earlier so alarmingly hindered David's plans?
Why his apparent complaisance towards David's even bolder pursuit of
his royal pretension? If the frustration of David's attempt to invoke the
blessing of Yahweh of Hosts on his own household suggests further
divine hindrance to David's plan, the close-out (23) of this section of
our text, appears once again to make Yahweh complicit in David's
duplicity. For, in the context of David's avowal in 6.21, this noting of
Michal's lifelong childlessness evidently unequivocally vindicates
David against Michal and the family of Saul. But does it exculpate
David with Yahweh? Or is Michal made by our author into the unwitting instrument of Yahweh, whose words, while revealing her own
damnable obtuseness towards the will of Yahweh, expose at the same
time David's self-serving hypocrisy? The many questions which crowd
in upon the reader at the end of 2 Samuel 6 lead on to the final section
of our stretch of text.
With the preceding 2 Samuel 7 links up by scenic contiguity, albeit
following an undefined lapse of time, with David now installed in the
house to which he had returned in 6.20 (7.la), and by thematic continuity, with David concerned again about the housing of the ark (7.2; cf.
6.17). David's raising the matter with Nathan is motivated by his perception, purportedly newly arrived at, of the incongruity of the ark's
housing compared with his own. However, a clash of rhetorical signals
belies the face-value of David's words. On the one hand, the question
put to Nathan by 'the king' (three times so styled in 1-3) deploys the
coercive power of his royal position to obtain the response he wants;
yet, on the other, the nub of David's inquiry is cloaked in evasive indirection, and presented with a defensive aggressiveness ('look here
now', K] i"IN~l 2a(3). This rhetoric portrays a David who has waited for
the right moment to put to Nathan a line of argument he thinks will be
persuasive, in order to secure divine approval for something which
240
David had inferably long been projecting. Yet this coerciveness, mediated through a coyness so incongruous in 'the king' (as David is exclusively termed in 7.1-3), reveals a tell-tale uneasiness about his
approach.
For under the guise of consulting the prophet Nathan about his project to rehouse the ark, David is actually seeking to manipulate, indeed
to coerce, Yahweh. Unlike his removal of the ark from Baal Judah to
Jerusalem, where in the wake of his divinely wrought victories David
could act without formally consulting Yahweh but having at least the
colour of his approval, here he requires formal indication of divine
permission once again to relocate the ark. But subliminally David harbours doubts that Yahweh will approve a move covertly designed to
promote his own monarchic pretensions. Hence the mixture of supplicant reticence and imperious regality in his approach to Nathan. At first
it is a mixture that works: Nathan promptly assures David of Yahweh's
full support, whatever exactly it is he is proposing (3). Once again, it
would appear, divine authority can be subjected to monarchic will.
But with unexpected suddenness any illusion of divine subservience
is shattered. Night frees Nathan the courtier from the coercive presence
of 'the king', only to translate him into the presence of an irresistibly
higher sovereign, now to be Yahweh's spokesperson. He is to mediate
to David (7.5a, emphasized by repetition 8acc,17) an authoritative word
of Yahweh, one the king neither has solicited, nor can manipulate. In it
Yahweh imperiously renders account of David's deeds and intentions,
cutting through the indirection and duplicity of David's words and
actions, reasserting Yahweh's sovereign prerogative to order David's
career in order to fulfil the destiny of Yahweh's people.
That a new and decisive stage has been reached in the changing relationship of David and Yahweh in our stretch of text is forcibly signalled in the rhetoric of Yahweh's opening utterances. First, Yahweh
denominates David as 'my subject, my underling' C"DD 5aa), using
strong syntactical marking to stress the relational term. Then the first
words addressed to David remorselessly expose David's plan as unacceptable, as untenable. Yahweh articulates its essence with a brutal
succinctness, and refutes its terms with a compelling logic (5b-7) that
diametrically opposes his own self-determined freedom of movement
among his people ('to move around, range abroad' "j'pnnn 6b,7aa) to
the constraining enclosedness ('to be ensconced, settled'; DCT 5b, 6aa)
of David's projected cedar-house (5b, 7b). This uncompromising
241
rejection of all that is covertly implicated in David's plan ruthlessly

exposes his duplicity towards Yahweh, bringing to an end any appearance that Yahweh colludes in David's machinations.
In its second segment ('so now then'; nnin 8aa) Yahweh's speech
moves on to expound his divine prerogative over 'his subject, David'
(8act) with regard to 'his people, Israel' (8b, lOa; cf. previously 7af3).
These rhetorically stressed relational terms already signal the gist of
Yahweh's case, as does his pointed assumption here of his role as the
supreme warrior-king, through his liturgical title associated with the
ark, YHWH Seba'ot, 'Yahweh of Hosts' (8aa). In every stage of David's
career, past, present, and future, it is his sovereign initiative that is
operative, securing David victory over enemies, bestowing on David a
status equal to any of them (8-9). But this initiative is directed, not primarily towards the exaltation of David, but to the fulfilling of Yahweh's own wider plan to ensure a secure future for his people, Israel
(10-1 la). Israel's destiny is thus in the hands, not of the king David, as
his royal subjects, but of their sovereign lord Yahweh, as his people.
Thus in the economy of the divine king Yahweh of Hosts David's
role is not that of melek 'monarchic king' after which David strives, but
that of nag id 'leader of the people', to which Yahweh had appointed
him (8b; cf. 6.21). Hence it is that all the further statements about
David's career in v. 9 follow directly on from Yahweh's foregrounding
of his nagid-ship in 8b, and that the status-conferring 'so as to make
you a name as great as the name of the greatest in the earth' (9b) is
closely bound syntactically with 'and to prepare a place of safety for
my people, for Israel, etc' (10).10 Far from colluding with David, Yahweh here forces him to face the full implications of his duplicitous
avowal of the role of nagid over Yahweh's people, Israel (6.21). Hence,
it is not David who can, through control of the ark, subject and manipulate Yahweh of Hosts in the furtherance of his own royal pretensions,
but Yahweh of Hosts who can and will, through control of David's career, subject, manipulate, yes, and even exalt him, in the exercise of his
divine prerogative as God of Israel. For the text's Yahweh there is the
world of difference between a royal pretension that, through the
essayed subjection of god and people, promotes the exaltation of one,
and a divine prerogative that, through the realized exaltation of one,
promotes the welfare of all Yahweh's people.
10. Thus 'so as to make' CTOJJI 9b) is the first in a series of four weqatal forms
which bind 9b syntactically with v. 10. See in detail 5.2.1.3, pp. 180-83.
242
The third and decisive segment of Yahweh's speech (llb-16) thus

begins with an undertaking to David in the style of a formal royal decree: 'Yahweh hereby declares to you that a house is what Yahweh will
make for you' (lib). This measured pronouncement, achieves rhetorical impact by the simplest of means, at once reversing and transcending
David's plan, candidly expressed and rejected in Yahweh's opening
utterance: 'will you build me a dwelling-house!' (5b). The next stage of
Yahweh's initiative for David and for Israel thus comprehensively
forestalls David's projected initiative for Yahweh. In these few words it
might appear that the god of the ark, the divine warrior-king Yahweh of
Hosts, calmly grants David the very thing he had been scheming for:
the status of dynastic melek. But already the context of their utterance
(8-1 la) belies so crass an understanding, and from the obliquity of reference to David in the words that followan ironic rhetorical counterpoise to David's obliquity in 7.2!the reader soon realizes that
Yahweh's promise is at once less and more than this.
First, most of what Yahweh says is referred not to David direct, but
to his descendants (12,14-15). Hence this 'comment' on Yahweh's
'topic' statement (lib) begins by making doubly clear that what follows will happen after David's death (12aa), and proceeds thereafter
with Yahweh consistently referring the promise to David's offspring
(12b, 14-15). Only at the end of his speech does he again refer it to
David (16).11 Then further, although Yahweh's comment uses two
other terms from the semantic field of melek, namely, 'kingship'
(DD^DD 12b, 16a; cf. 13b), and 'throne' (NOD 16b; cf. 13b), he never
directly designates either David or his descendants melek. This eschewing of the term melek, even where its status is obliquely being conferred, is particularly eloquent in the context of Yahweh's preceding
exposition of David's role in the divine economy. The contextual
implicature is clear, that is, that the continuation of David's line in perpetuity is promised here, not in order to confer a status on David, but to
impose a function on his house. This function is necessary for the further realization of Yahweh's plan to give his people Israel stability and
11. The situation is quite other in Ps. 89.18-36[19-37], where the promise is
directly referred to David throughout. There the formulation serves the rhetoric of
the lament, by turning to account the cache with God of the pious ancestor David as
grounds for appeal to God for the present anointed (37-50[38-51], esp. 48-50(4951]), just as the different formulation here can be seen to serve the rhetoric of our
text. On Ps. 89 see in detail my Claim for Power (forthcoming).
243
security (cf. 10), and for this function dynastic continuity is essential.
Thus the royal status David and his house gain as a result is as it were a
necessary by-product of Yahweh's directing the career of David as
nagid for the benefit of his people: the stability and security of the
people is reflected in and bound up with the stability and security of the
dynasty (14-16). If this is not the kind of melek-ship for which David
had been striving, then nor is it the pure ndgid-ship Yahweh had earlier
expounded to David.12 If God disposes whatever humanity proposes,
God has nonetheless to dispose in such a way as to involve humanity in
his project.
The concluding note (v. 17), relating how carefully Nathan reported
to David exactly what Yahweh said to him, comes as a salutary reminder that Yahweh's speech is an unsolicited message (cf. v. 4), still to be
delivered to David by an intermediary. The length of Yahweh's discourse, and its constant direct address to David, may by now easily
have obscured for the reader the estrangement of David from Yahweh
which made the oracle necessary in the first place. Hence this elaborate
reminder that the plain-speaking authority of Yahweh's prophetic word
is to countermand and efface the obseqious flattery of Nathan's courtly
response to David (v. 3). Nathan is here shown to discharge his duty to
a greater king in a more exalted court, as mediator of the divine word to
a fellow subject. The reader is thus once more made aware that it is
Yahweh who has seized the initiative to heal the rift with David, and on
his own sovereign terms.
The final scene of the chapter (18-29) brings us, in great detail,
David's response to the divine message. This response must defer to
Yahweh's uncompromising assertion of sovereignty, must efface all
trace of David's striving after melek-ship, and acquiesce totally in the
divine initiative for himself and his house. Thus David has, consciously
and deliberately, to come into 'the presence of Yahweh' (miT ""B1? 18a;
cf. 6.5aa, 16ba, 17b, 21aa, 21b), back into a direct communication
with his god not in evidence since 5.19,23. He has to leave his house of
cedar, the splendid symbol of his royal status, the base for his attempt
to manipulate Yahweh, in order to ensconce himself in the stark simplicity of the ark-shrine (18a; cf. 2). Here in this humble setting we see,
as in 5.20, a David awed by the effectual actions of Yahweh (18b, 2124). We see a David overwhelmed by the magnitude of Yahweh's
promises for the future (19, 25-27), far beyond the deserts of himself
12. On this in detail, see the two following chapters.
244
and his house (18ba). We see a David now brought to acceptmore, to

embracethe lowly status of Yahweh's underling (19a(3 and passim),
thus fulfilling with a sublime unconscious irony his own hasty retort to
Michal 'I shall become of even less account than this so as to become
lowly in my own eyes!' (6.22a).
Indeed, almost the whole of David's retort to Michal (6.21-22),
which masked behind pompous bombast and mocking hyperbole the
deep wound inflicted on his pride by Michal's taunt, is now seen to
have been ironically programmatic for 2 Samuel 7. First, Yahweh
challenges David (7.8-1 la) with his facile affirmation of divinely
appointed ndgid-ship over Yahweh's people (6.21ap). Next Yahweh
upholds, but for David's offspring (7.15), David's spiteful assertion of
having superseded Michal's father and all his house (6.21aa). Then the
hollowness of David's vaunting claim there (6.21 bis) to be acting
'before Yahweh' is here made abundantly apparent (7.16 reading "OS1?,
18,26,29). Again, throughout his prayer David abases himself, in a way
never envisaged in his sardonic parody of Michal (6.22), to defer all his
royal pretensions to the absolute priority of the divine prerogative. In
all of David's prayer13 not only is the word melek itself never used,
neither is any other word from the same semantic field. Thus, although
David constantly mentions the standing of his house with Yahweh and
the future Yahweh has promised for it (18b, 19a, 25, 26b, 27a, 29),
nowhere does David define it as a royal house, despite Yahweh's having already done so (12b, 16; cf. 13b). David has no need now to affirm
espousal of the role of Yahweh's nagid: his whole demeanour evinces
the fact.
Then through the final abject words of his prayer (7.29) resonates
David's scornful parody of the blessing formula 'blessed be Yahweh
who...' (6.21 LXX). For to this divine warrior-king 'Yahweh of Hosts
(twice so invoked 7.26, 27), god of the ark, David has, in his prayer,
ceded point by point the constitutive elements of his royal pretension.
First, the establishing of an enduring house (repeatedly 25, 26, 27, 29),
then the getting of lasting honour (26a; cf. 9b and 6.22), and the right to
decree his sovereign will for his subjects (also repeatedly 25, 27, 28),
all are relinquished. But, finally and supremely, David concedes to
13. The introduction to the prayer, however, denominates David as Til "J^Qn,
'the king, David'. But this has point in the context of David there leaving his cedarpalace, the mark of his melek-stalus, to enter the presence of Yahweh, where he
tacitly cedes his royal pretensions.
245
Yahweh the prize he most grasped after, sovereign control over Yahweh's blessing (29). Here we reach the final encompassing irony in our
stretch of text. For it was control of this very blessing bestowed by the
divine warrior-king, implicitly manifest in the victories against the
Philistines, then made cultically present through the ark, that David had
so assiduously sought to gain for himself (6.12, 18b, 20a, 21 LXX; 7.2
3), in order to secure his status as 'monarch over Israel' (^"ifeT *?& "]^Q
5.17; cf. 5.12a, 6.20).14 In ceding this to Yahweh David has ceded all;
yet, in ceding it, he stands to gain all!
6.3. Ideological Polemic in 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29
David's prayer thus brings to a culmination and to a resolution15 themes
as yet inchoate in the opening section (5.17-25) of our stretch of text,
but developed more and more explicitly in the following sections. To
requisition the ark, talisman of the divine warrior-king, to his royal
capital is not only made logistically possible by the victories over the
Philistines, but also rendered by them more politically appropriate,
through the boost they give to his kingly status. But the plan of the
text's David to install Yahweh in a cedar-temple that adequately
reflects David's royal status betrays his ever more evident, though
unavowed, real aspiration: through permanent possession of the ark to
manipulate Yahweh of Hosts, so as to control his support and blessing
for David's urban dynastic kingship.
David's aspiration to this style of melek-ship, self-evidently contrary
to all notions of Yahweh as sovereign and independent, is resoundingly
rejected by Yahweh. In direct contradiction of David's plan to install
Yahweh in a permanent house in the city of David, to be at the beck
and call of the urban king, Yahweh asserts his immemorial presence
among all his people in his movable tent-shrine (7.5-7). When it comes
to a question of installing, Yahweh is the one who will install Davida
David who, as Yahweh's underling, has been, is, and will remain, at
14. On the other hand, in Ps. 132, in the different setting of the royal temple
liturgy and with the different function of positive propaganda for the Davidic
monarchy, this same basic view of the matter informs the rhetoric of an appeal for
divine support for the dynasty. See my Claim for Power (forthcoming).
15. As with all attempts at closure, this 'resolution' raises important questions
while giving somewhat facile answers to others: see the discussion in Ch. 9 below.
246
Yahweh's beck and call (7.8-1 la)in a permanent house of his own
making (7.1 lb-16).
Thus within this glaring difference of interests between David and
Yahweh there inevitably develops serious conflict in their relationship:
who is to install whom, where, in what capacity, for what reason, and to
what end? Concomitant with and underlying these differences is a fundamental ideological issue. If Yahweh's will and purpose is to prevail
on earth, how does Yahweh mediate it effectively to his people? Who
in the world can impose, authoritatively and beyond question, the
divine prerogative on the people of Yahweh? To these questions our
text offers a clear answer. In the divine economy the religio-political
governorship of the people is not that of melek, monarchic lord over a
subject people, exercising a priestly right of access to God that bestows
exclusive powers of intermediation, open to human attempts to manipulate the divine (6.13-20a; 7.1-3). It is that of nagid, exemplary leader of
Yahweh's people, chosen by Yahweh and subservient to his will, as
authoritatively expressed through the prophetically mediated word of
Yahweh (7.8-16). We will reflect further on some of the implications of
this answer in our final chapter, after we have probed in the next two
chapters the backgrounds of the ideological positions it characterizes by
the terms melek and nagid.
Hence in the polemical strategy of our stretch of text David's prayer
is the rhetorical coup de theatre as it were, because David's response to
Yahweh's prophetic word is crucial to its rhetorical effectiveness: if the
king, cast as opponent in pursuit of an ideology inimical to the authorial
ideology, is persuaded, then with him the reader will be persuaded.
Thus the king's stammering but eloquent yielding to the force of Yahweh's case clinches its appeal to the reader. His abandonment of his
royal pretension, dramatized in his 'uninstalling' himself from his
cedar-house, professed throughout in his repeated acknowledgments of
Yahweh's sovereign initiative towards David's house (7.18b|3, 19a0,
2la(3, 25, 27ap, 28b), climaxes in his ceding to Yahweh sovereignty
over bestowal of his blessing upon that house (7.29). And what is it that
persuades him thus to abandon the glittering prize of supreme power on
earth? What but the indefeasible authority of the prophetically mediated
word of Yahweh (7.19, 21, 25, 27, 28, 29)!
Chapter 7
YAHWEH AND DAVID THROUGH DIFFERENCE AND DEFERENCE 1:
A TRANSTEXTUAL CONTEXT TO THE POLEMIC

IN 2 SAMUEL 5.17-7.29
7.1. Retrospect and Orientation
From the foregoing reflective discussion of the text of 2 Sam. 5.177.29 it should by now be abundantly clear that I perceive within this
narrative sequence in the story of David a rhetoric of polemic, which
sets the author's perception of the divine prerogative of Yahweh, god of
Israel, over against a burgeoning royal pretension which he attributes to
the David who, precisely in our stretch of text, is entering upon a
monarchic rule over Israel. The elements of this polemic are patently
articulated in the text through the interlocked contraposing of a number
of binary pairs: "]^Q melek, 'monarchic king' versus "P33 ndgid,
'divinely-appointed leader'; rTQ bayit, 'fixed, permanent dwelling,
house, palace, temple' versus ^HN 'ohel, 'mobile, temporary, freeranging shelter, tent'; 3CT yaSab, 'to be settled, installed, ensconced'
versus ""['T'nnn hithallek, 'to move about freely, range far and wide'. To
these explicit oppositions may be added a further implicit one: *"?$$
miTO Sa'al bYHWH, 'to inquire of Yahweh, ascertain his will' versus
its absence, that is, failure to do so.
Moreover, in our text the general issues involved in the polemic are
sharply focused in and through the question of control of the ark, of its
god, and thereby of its inherent divine blessing. For in the broad context of ancient religious belief in general, and the belief-system mediated through the Hebrew Bible in particular, this consuming concern
with blessing and its control is hardly surprising, since to enjoy the
divine blessing is the highest aim of humanity. To control the source of
the blessing, therefore, is not only to guarantee for oneself a happy,
successful, and honoured career, but to have the power of granting or
withholding this from others. Then further, within the narrower context
248
of the ideology and the practice of kingship in the ancient Near East,
these actions of David in our text and their purported motivation are
eminently explicable, as we shall see in detail below. Thus David's
requisitioning of the ark of the divine warrior-king, Yahweh of Hosts,
and his bringing it to his capital, Jerusalem, was but a first step in his
monarchic programme. Fully to assimilate the ark and its god to the
royal purpose, however, it was further necessary for David to house
them in a shrine of his own providing, and moreover, one commensurate with his royal status. Hence his plan to build a house of cedar for
Yahweh.
Now it is precisely his plan to build a temple for Yahweh that
becomes the focal point for the polemic in the final section of our text
(2 Sam. 7) against this kind of royal ideology, a polemic the leading
terms of which I set out above. But in arguing against David's pretensions to establish an ancient-Near-Eastern-style kingship in Israel, our
text reflects and adapts elements of that ideology in order to construct
an acceptable Israelite ideology of dynastic rule. It is this constant reference to and adaptation of a presupposed background of royal ideology and practice that I mean by the expression 'a transtextual context'
in the subtitle to this chapter. It is transtextual in the sense that it makes
allusive reference to elements from a broadly coherent set of ideas
which transcends, not merely our particular stretch of text itself, or
indeed the book(s) of Samuel, but also the Hebrew Bible as a whole.1
Because this reference is so pervasive, it forms a constitutive part of the
pragmatics of our text, a context of understanding necessary for the
rhetorical force (poetics) of the text's polemic to be fully effective.
1. The term 'transtextual' is significant as one of a set of three such terms,
whose meaning I define to suit the needs of my discussion. Thus 'intratextual' I
reserve for relations between various parts of Samuel, as being a stretch of text with
sufficient plot, thematic, and ideological cohesion to justify treating it as 'a text'.
'Intertextual' I use for observable relations between the basically homogeneous set
of texts known as the Hebrew Bible, texts which all arise within the same basic
milieu and (mostly) share a common language, a milieu we designate 'ancient
Israel', and which also share many similar ideological stances while also evincing
manifest differences of subject matter and point of view. Finally, 'transtextual' I
employ for observable similarities between bodies of textin our case the Hebrew
Bible on the one hand and texts from other ancient Near Eastern sources on the
otherwhich have arisen from milieux sufficiently differentiated geographically,
politically, linguistically, and ideologically to justify treating them as basically
heterogeneous.
7. Yahweh and David through Difference and Deference 1
249
Hence it is advisable for us to fill in this context for ourselves from the
sources available to us.
7.1.1. The Polemic against melek-ship
The binary opposition melek ("['PQ) versus nagid (T33) headed the above
list of operative contrarieties in our text, because this pair is patently
the chief focal point of the polemic it mounts. Over against the status
and role of melek, 'monarchic ruler, king' over Israel, as conceived and
aspired to by the text's David, is set the status and role of nagid,
'divinely appointed leader', as expounded and enforced by the text's
Yahweh. In the final chapter of this book I shall reflect on how, in the
event, Yahweh pragmatically deconstructs this opposition, by aligning
the role of David's descendants somewhere between the contraposed
extremes. But in order to understand the constituents of the polemic
and to appreciate the nuances of this compromise we must first explicate further the concepts of melek and of nagid being presupposed in
our text. Since the concept of melek, understood as referring to the general status and role of a monarchic ruler in the ancient Near East, provides the broader context against which the much more restricted
biblical concept of nagid takes on significance, I will discuss the former
in this chapter, and deal with the latter in the next.
7.2. Royal Ideology in the Ancient Near East
The ensuing discussion of texts emanating from the royal courts of
various ancient Near Eastern states claims no more than to be adequate
to the purpose it is intended to serve: namely, heuristically to provide as
minimal an account of royal ideology and practice in the ancient Near
East as is consistent with demonstrating both what aspects are operative
in our text, and how and to what end these aspects are invoked by it. In
doing so, I do not naively presuppose that there is just one, fully coherent and perduring, royal ideology pervading and dominating the ancient
Near East over two or three millennia.2 But having said that, it is a
matter of observation that a significant number of broadly similar
claims and assertions, often expressed in closely similar terms, usually
2. For discussions of various general aspects of royal ideology in the ancient
Near East see the following classic and more recent studies: Labat (1939), Engnell
(1967 [1943]), Frankfort (1948), Gadd (1948), Hooke (1958), Posener (1960), Liverani (1971), Whitelam (1979), Mikasa (1984).
250
within groups that have linguistic continuity, but sometimes also

between such groups, appear in royal texts from different times and
places within this general area. Given what we know of the ebb and
flow of political and cultural contacts and dominations within the area,
a hypothesis that allows for some degree of general diffusion of such
claims and assertions within the area, albeit undergoing decontextualization and recontextualization in the process, is not unreasonable.
7.2.1. Sources of Evidence
The evidence from the ancient Near East on the ideology and practice
of kingship on which I shall be drawing comes from written texts of
various kinds.3 These include hymns, laments, prayers, prophecies,
letters to the king, treaty texts, building inscriptions.4 The different
types of text use various elements of the ideology for purposes which
are particular to each type. Thus one must take due cognizance of the
appropriate contextual rhetoric, both of any material being cited as evidence of royal ideology, and of the biblical text under discussion. But,
while I draw on each of the above-cited types of text for information
about the royal ideology in general, the major specific type of textsource I will use is the royal building inscription.5 This is quite simply
because the rhetoric of our text, particularly in 2 Samuel 7, is focused
around the issue of royal temple-building. Indeed, it will become clear
from our discussion that 2 Samuel 7 is a kind of deformed building
text, where, instead of the divine permission to build being vouchsafed
3. I underline here how limited is our understanding of these texts and their
purposes, by quoting some sobering reflections of Levine, made apropos Assyrian
royal inscriptions, but applicable in varying degrees, mutatis mutandis, to most of
the texts we shall be dealing with here: 'we have few explicit statements about why
they were composed...We have little knowledge of what function these inscriptions served in Assyrian society. We have rarely stopped to ask what the message
is, what the scribe was trying to communicate, consciously or unconsciously, and to
whom the message was addressed' (1981: 57). Notwithstanding, we must do the
best we can with our resources within the limitations of our present knowledge.
4. For a convenient collection in English translation of examples of each of
these groups of texts, among others, see ANET. This collection does not, however,
include building inscriptions.
5. In his account of the literary characteristics of Assyrian royal inscriptions,
Grayson includes building accounts as a subtype under the broader classification
'commemorative text', a genre which also includes accounts of the kings' military
actions, often in the same text as building accounts (1981: 37-38).
251
and the building proceeding, Yahweh uncompromisingly refuses to

sanction a temple, opposing to it his own house-building plan. But in
Yahweh's argument in refutation of David's proposal and exposition of
his own, constituent elements of the royal ideology that conventionally
mutually reinforce kingship and temple-building are here turned against
David's proposal.6
Thus the structure and the themes of Mesopotamian royal building
inscriptions in particular will be found to correspond to elements in our
text in a more sustained way than any other kind of royal text known to
me. Among matters usually treated in the more developed exempla7 are
the divine legitimation of the monarch's rule, the glories of his reign
under the tutelage of the god(s), especially victories over enemies, and
the background to the (re)building of the temple, especially the granting
of divine permission to build. These recurrent themes and motifs of the
royal building texts correspond well in general terms with those found
in our stretch of text. Hence, while I draw on texts from a variety of
locales, the great majority will stem from Mesopotamia. This dominance of Mesopotamia in our discussion is in part due to the relative
paucity of relevant texts from elsewhere in the ancient Near East, apart
from Egypt. Had we more evidence from these sources, it may be that
they would assume much more salience. But in large part it is due to
the simple fact that, as between the two major sources Egypt and
Mesopotamia, the royal ideology reflected by and polemicized in
2 Samuel 7 corresponds more closely to that enunciated in and presupposed by extant Mesopotamian texts than that found in the Egyptian
royal texts available to us.
I suspect the reason for this is essentially historical. I take it that our
6. This setting of temple-building, proposed and rejected, decisive for understanding 2 Sam. 7, is ignored by Weippert when he cites 2 Sam. 7.4-17 as 'ein typisches Konigsorakel' in the context of his discussion of the seventh-century
Assyrian prophecy texts (1981: 105-106). Granted there are, as he indicates, some
significant similarities in 2 Sam. 7 with elements found in this set of texts, but so
are there also with other sets of royal texts, a point he does not make. Moreover,
despite his express delimition of 7.4-17 as the royal oracle, he excludes 7.4-7 from
his actual citation, thus disembarrassing himself of the anti-temple-building
polemic contained in those verses, ex hypothesi extraneous to a royal oracle.
7. For a recent, wider, discussion of Mesopotamian and North-West Semitic
building inscriptions in relation to the biblical accounts of temple-building, see
Hurowitz (1992). I am here only interested in those elements of royal ideology in
these texts which relate to the text we are concerned with.
252
text is reflecting in a polemical way the ideological pretensions of the

Judaean monarchy at a certain stage of its history.8 A good deal of that
history was overshadowed by the political power of two Mesopotamian
empires, mainly the Neo-Assyrian, but also latterly the Neo-Babylonian. The close connections we will uncover below between expressions in 2 Samuel 7 and those found in Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, especially from these two periods, point to these pretensions
being moulded, directly or indirectly,9 by the particular formulations
found in those texts. Thus the polemic of our text against these pretensions betrays an anxiety in certain circles,10 to define aggressively over
against this dominating royal ideology what, in their view, was a properly Israelite view of rulership. While historical questions of this kind
are not our prime concern here, the distinct possibility that our author
may have been influenced, whether immediately or mediately or both,
by the particular form the royal ideology took in Assyria, or later in
Babylonia, during the period in question justifies our paying particular
attention to texts from the Sargonid and Neo-Babylonian kings. With
these considerations in mind, let us now probe our text for evidence
that a similar royal ideology is present in or presupposed by our text.
7.2.2. Ancient Near Eastern Royal Ideology in Overall Plot and Theme
The broadest and most general index of a melek ideology as presupposed context for our text is its plot action: with divine aid David
fights victorious battles against his enemies (5.17-25),n triumphantly
8. Since I am not primarily engaged in a historical inquiry, I need not attempt
here to define more closely than the following brief remarks do when this was, irrespective of whether the evidence available would allow such an attempt.
9. By direct influence I have in mind actual Mesopotamian royal texts seen by
the king and members of the royal court in Judah. These will certainly have
included treaties, and probably other propaganda texts, perhaps including texts
reproducing or approximating the royal building inscriptions. The Judaean king and
royal propagandists may well have found ready-made in such texts claims which, in
Hebrew dress, would serve the purposes of the Jerusalem monarch. 'Mediate'
influence of course covers the more general diffusion of Mesopotamian royal ideology in Israel and Judah as a result of general cultural influence, as well as of the
Assyro-BabyIonian political domination in particular.
10. In the final chapter I will remark on what our text reveals about the ideology
of these putative circles.
11. Leading the fight against enemies of the kingdom was one of the most fundamental and perduring of responsibilities discharged by ancient Near Eastern
253
processes with a cultic symbol of his god into his new royal capital,12
where it is inaugurated with feasting and music (6.1-20).13 Thereafter
he projects a splendid new temple to house this symbol and its god
(7.1-3), and receives a divine oracle concerning the project (7.5-16). A
broadly similar set of events is observable in the inscriptions of Sargon
II, which deal with his building of his new capital Dur-Sharrukin. The
longer recensions first give an account, varying in length and detail, of
the many victorious battle campaigns fought by Sargon, after which
they narrate his work in building and furbishing his capital, again
varying in length and detail.14 Since in effect he built on a virgin site,
thus entailing the building of new temples for the gods, Sargon sought
and obtained divine permission.15 Moreover, Sargon relates how he
brought Ashur and the other gods into his new palace for a dedication
festival celebrated with feasting and music.16 These accounts do not
kings, and naturally all accounts known to us from the many kingdoms great and
small that made up the ancient Near East represent the king as victorious.
12. New in the sense that, according to the story in 2 Sam. 5.6-12, Jerusalem
was captured from the Jebusites by David, evidently expressly to become his
capital.
13. Esarhaddon celebrated a dedication feast for three days in the court of the
rebuilt Esharra in Ashur (Borger 1956: Assur B vii 26-34).
14. For a convenient compendium of the various versions in English translation
see ARAB, II, pp. 1-66.
15. Compare Cylinder inscription: âlkat baniSu mehrit ukSul ana Damqu u
Sarru-ilu da'inute teniSete talimani ina temeqi uSaqqima ahratan ume ina tub
libbi u bu 'ari kirbuSu erbi ina zuk dimgal-kalama ana Sa-u$ (nit ?)-ka raSibat Nina
attaSi qate zikri piya kenum ki utibuni eli nabe sirute beleya ma 'adiS itibma epeS
all hire nari iqbuni nannaSun la muSpelu attakilma (Lyon 1883: 36), 'The "way"
of its (the city's) building I lifted up (?) with fervor, opposite, to the gods Damqu
and Shar-ilani, the judges of men, the full brothers, and that, in future days,
entrance thereinto might be in joy of heart and gladness, I raised my hands in
prayer, in the chamber of the "masterbuilder of the land", to Shaushka, the powerful goddess of Nineveh. The pious words of my mouth, which she made pleasing
(?), was exceedingly pleasing to the gods (?), my lords, and they commanded that
the town be built and the canal dug. I trusted in their word which cannot be brought
to naught...' (ARAB, II, p. 64). It should be noted that this applies to the city-project as a whole, rather than specifically to the temples, but presumably they are
included by implicature.
16. Compare the following from the Bull inscription: ...ultu Sipir ali u
ekallate 'a uqattu Hani rabute aSibutu ASSur ina TiSrit kirbiSina aqrema taSil(ta)Sina
aSkun (Lyon 1883: 46), 'After I had completed the construction of the city and my
palaces, I invited the great gods who dwell in Assyria into their midst in the month
254
specifically refer to processions, but clearly they will have been

involved.
In making this comparison I am not suggesting that this ideological
background has artificially generated the set of events narrated in
2 Samuel 6, so that the set strikes a (modern) reader as odd in its textual
context, and remains entirely opaque unless seen within this ideological
context. On the contrary, as we have seen in earlier chapters, individually and in sum these actions are all quite explicable within the unfolding story of David and Yahweh in Samuel. The Philistine attack against
an emerging independent ruler, victory over the Philistines as a necessary and sufficient condition for removal of the ark from Baal Judah,
cultic procession of the ark as victory celebration for David and for
Yahweh, its installation in the city of David as token of continuing
divine support for David, the Nathan oracle as setting the terms of this
support, all arise 'naturally' from David's situation at the epoch in his
story our stretch of text narrates. Nonetheless, the suggested ideological
context helps to explain why, out of the possible sets of events in the
tradition about David which could have been narrated,17 this particular
set is singled out for narration in this way at this juncture in the narrative. That is because the author's thematic concerns are intimately
bound up with this ideology.
Moreover, not only does the sum of David's (and Yahweh's) actions
here point to this background in royal ideology from the ancient Near
East, but their concatenation in fact closely mirrors conventional
sequences found both in narrative accounts and in summary lists of
royal activities in texts from this milieu. First in our stretch of text are
the accounts of victories over his enemies (the Philistines) gained
through divine aid sought by David. The use of the stereotyped expression 'consult Yahweh' (miTD ^27 5.17, 23) has its analogue in the
standing expression 'the trustworthy oracle of DN(s) [name of deity,
divine name]' in similar Mesopotamian accounts,18 as well as those
Tashritu. I held a [lit. their, the city's and palaces'] dedication feast' (ARAB, II 94,
p. 47).
17. This statement does not in itself implicate a particular view about the historicity of this or any other part of the David story in Samuel, since it is assertable,
whether the set of events in question are historical or purely fictional.
18. For the meaning and usage of annu klnu, 'reliable affirmative answer', normally obtained Jby divinatory means, see CAD annu 2. For an instance in an inscription of Esarhaddon see n. 35 below.
255
from elsewhere.19 In addition, the role of the divine theophany in securing David's victories also has numerous parallels in royal inscriptions
elsewhere in the ancient Near East.20 In this regard it is worth noting
that the particular form of the divine theophany in both incidents in
5.17-25,21 a heavy rainstorm,22 in 5.20 producing a flood,23 also has
19. References to the pharaoh's receipt of divine assurances of victory do not

commonly occur in Egyptian texts, where the divine commission and enabling
seems more commonly to be assumed, e.g., ARE, II 418, 425-30 (Tuthmose III);
but see ARE, II 827 (Tuthmose IV) and III 105 (Seti I) for instances of divine
assurance. Divine assurances were given by Baal-shameym to Zakkur (Zakkur stele
col. A 11. 13-17, Gibson 1975: 8, 10) and cf. the statements of Mesha', 11. 14, 19, 32
(Gibson 1971: no. 16, p. 75), and Panammu (Gibson 1975: no. 13 11. 8-9; no. 14
11. 1-2), etc.
20. The standard Akkadian term for the active divine theophany is melammu,
borrowed from Sumerian me-ldm, 'brightness, effulgence': see the entry in CAD,
X/2, 9-12 s.v., and, for this and other Sumerian and Akkadian terms denoting the
divine splendour, Cassin (1968). Very frequent in Assyrian royal inscriptions from
the Middle Assyrian period onwards, it is often used with the verb sahapu,
'overturn, overwhelm', to describe the divine theophany giving the king victory in
battle. Compare the following two early examples: Tiglath Pileser 1,36URU u-ra-tina-dS URU dan-nu-ti-Su-nu 21Sd i-na KUR pa-na-ri na-du-u ^pu-ul-hu a-di-ru melam da-Sur EN-ia *9i$[sic\]-hup-$u-nu-ti-ma, 'with regard to their city Urratinas,
their stronghold situated in the land Pananu, the terror, fear, (and) splendour of th
god Assur, my lord, overwhelmed them' (Grayson RIM-AP 2 A.0.87.1 col. ii);
Tukulti-Ninurta II, pul-hi me-lam-me Sd aS-Sur EN-ia is-hup-Su-nu, 'fear of the
splendour of Assur overwhelmed them [sell, the people of Suru]' (Grayson RIM-AP
2A.O.101.1col. i).
21. For detailed discussion see above 3.2.1 n. 23, 3.2.2, pp. 101-102.
22. The term mehu, 'storm-wind, violent rainstorm' is common as a term
descriptive of divinely aided victories in Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. See the
relevant CAD entry, and cf. the following prayer to Ishtar from Ashurbanipal
(Streck 1916: 114) Cylinder B V: 44umma atti qaritti DINGIRME kima bilti 45ina
qabal tamhari puttiriSuma dekiSu mehu 46$aru lemnu, 'Do thou, O heroine of the
gods, undo him in the thick of battle like a (soldier's) pack, array against him a
storm, a terrible wind'. I note in a Sumerian hymn of Shulgi that me-ldm is associated with ud(u4)-gal = Akkadian mehu Sulgi Hymn C 1. 3 Castellino (1972: 248).
23. Akkadian abubu '(primaeval) flood', the verb rahdsu, 'to flood', and the
derived nouns rihsu, rihis/ltu, 'flood' all occur in Mesopotamian royal inscriptions
as metaphorical terms in accounts of divinely-aided victories, of actions of the
god(s) and/or of the king in battle: see the appropriate entries in CAD and AHw and
the texts cited there. For a summary survey of the storm-theophany in the ancient
Near East, see Jeremias (1965: 75-87), and, more restricted in range and point of
256
many parallels in Mesopotamian texts. Though these points of similarity are in themselves rather too general to demonstrate a particular ideological connection, they will be seen to be an important constituent of
the wider picture which will emerge as we pursue our discussion.
Then an account of temple-building following upon that of divinely
aided victories in battle is a standard schema24 in royal building
inscriptions.25 In its more developed form, a myriad of Mesopotamian
examples span the period covered by extant texts, from at least the time
of the nineteenth century BCE rulers of Larsa, Kudur-Mabuk,26 father of
Warad-Sin, and Nur-Adad,27 to the sixth century BCE Neo-Babylonian
king, Nabopolassar.28 The schema is also observable, to some degree,
view, Niehaus (1995: 130-36); for a recent wide-ranging survey of elements in
divine theophany see Scriba (1995: 14-79).
24. This sequence is observable as early as the inscriptions of Eanatum of
Lagash (twenty-fifth century BCE: SARI I La 3.1, 2). It is also a notable component
in both the Babylonian epic of Marduk, enwna eliS, and the Ugaritic cycle of Baal,
where the respective god, having secured his kingship through victory over a force
of chaos, is provided with a palace-temple as visible embodiment of his divine
sovereignty: cf. EE vi 49-79 ANET, pp. 68b-69a; CTA 4 [=IIAB] ANET, pp. 13Ib135b; and in general Kapelrud (1963), Ulshofer (1977: Ch. III).
25. But it should be noted that, though very widely followed, the sequence is
not invariable, and that accounts giving the reverse order of victory in battle following upon temple-building do occur: this latter order is followed in an inscription of
Urnanshe of Lagash (twenty-sixth-twenty-fifth century BCE) SARI I La 1.6, and in
some of the inscriptions of Eanatum the sequence is building-war-building, e.g.,
La 3.5,6,8. Moreover, it is evident that the sequence is not necessarily historical.
Thus, e.g., the annals of Tiglath Pileser I, in following the schema, introduce his
restoration of the Ishtar temple and other temples in Ashur thus: iS-tu KUR.MES-w?
d
a-Sur pat gim-ri-Su-nu â-pe-lu e dINANNA dS-Su-ri-te 87NIN-uz, etc... 8 9 ... epuS90u-Sek-lil, 'after I had gained total dominion over the enemies of the god
Ashur, I completely rebuilt the dilapidated part of the Temple of Assyrian Ishtar,
etc.' (RIM-AP 2 A.O.87.1 vi 85-90). Then, following material on some other matters (vi 94-vii 35), and a further set of royal epithets (vii 36-59), an account of
repairs to the temple of Anu and Adad (vii 60-114) is introduced by ina umiSuma,
'at that time' (vii 60), but a little further on the work is defined by ina Surru
Sarrutiya, 'in my accession year' (vii 71). On the highly conventionalized use of
these and other 'dating' formulae in Assyrian royal texts, see Tadmor (1981).
26. Frayne RIM-EP4 E4.2.13.10, p. 216.
27. IRSA IVBSc, p. 189; Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.2.8.4, p. 144. Further, even
clearer, examples are to be found in the inscriptions of the eighteenth century First
Dynasty of Babylon ruler Samsu-Iluna IRSA IVC7b-d; RIM-EP 4 4.3.7.5,3,7.
28. See, e.g., Langdon (1912: Nabopolassar nos. 1, 4).
257
in Egyptian royal texts,29 and is followed in the ninth-century inscriptions of the Moabite king Mesha30 and the Aramean king Zakkur of
Hamath.31 The plan of our text's David, then, so soon after his victories
over the Philistines, to build a temple for the ark, clearly fits into a
long-standing and widely attested pattern of ancient Near Eastern royal
practice.
Moreover, the context of 5.17-7.29 implies that David's templebuilding project belongs to the early part of his (full) reign over Israel
(cf. 5.1-12). It is not unknown in Mesopotamian royal building inscriptions for the king to make a point of the fact that he devotes himself to
this task from the outset of his reign,32 taking it that this will be read as
a mark of significant piety towards the gods. In our text, the point is
given a polemical twist: in thus projecting a temple from the outset of
his reign, David betrays his aspirations to establish his rule as an
ancient-Near-Eastern-style melek-ship, in which the king provides for a
grateful god. Right at the outset Yahweh scotches this aspiration.
29. An inscription of a royal official to Merikare in Heracleopolis follows this
sequence, though here both the fighting and the temple restoration are done by
Kheti on behalf of the king: ARE, I 403. It is observable also in the 'victory hymn'
of Tuthmosis III (ANET, pp. 373-75); Lichtheim (1976: II, 35-39); but the adaptation of this by Amenhotep III reverses the order, giving a detailed account of the
king's temple-building activity in the voice of the king, to which the god Amun-Re
responds with an account of the victories he achieved for the king, ANET, p. 37576; Lichtheim 1976: II, 43-47.
30. Donner-Rollig KAIl no. 181; Gibson 1971: no. 16.
31. Gibson 1975: no. 5. The form 'Zak(k)ur' is documented in an inscription of
Adad-Nirari III (Grayson RIM-AP 3, p. 203 A.O.104.2 1. 4); cf. Weippert (1981:
103 n. 76).
32. So, e.g., Tukulti-Ninurta I: ina umeSuma ina Surru Sarrutiya dINANNA
NIN bita Sana 3d el mahri E.AN.NA-d quSudu iriSanima, 'At that time, at the
beginning of my sovereignty, the goddess Itar, my mistress, requested of me
another temple which would be holier than her (present) shrine' (Grayson RIM-AP
1, p. 255 A.O. 78.11 11. 82-4); and Tiglath Pileser I: ina Surru Sarrutiya dAnu u
d
ISKUR DINGIR.MES GAL.MES EN.MES-m AGA-mw SANGA-fi-ia epaS
atmaniSu iqbuni, 'In my accession year the gods Anu and Adad, the gods, my lords,
who love my priesthood, commanded me to rebuild their shrine' (Grayson RIM-AP
2, p. 28 A.O. 87.1 col. vii 11. 71-75), and later Ashurbanipal on his restoration of th
E hul hul: reS Sarru-ti-a ekurru Su-a-tu a-na si-hir-ti-Su u-Sar-r[i-ih-ma u]-Saklil(!), '(in) my accession year I fully restored that temple to its former glory' (Streck
1916: Tontafelinschrift 1, K228 + K2675, Rv 1. 51), and see Streck (1916: Tontafelinschrift 14 Obv Col. II11. 26-34) for his restoration of the Esagila in Babylon
in his first regnal year (ina mah-re-e pale-id).
258
Then further, the seeking and receiving in some form or other33 of

divine approval for individual temple-building projects, while by no
means always mentioned,34 is nonetheless a frequent, and sometimes a
significantly developed,35 element in such texts. Observing this, and
working from a conviction about the general dependence of Mesopotamian monarchs on divine leading, many36 have assumed that such
33. Perhaps the best known, because of the attention attracted by the respective
inscriptions of the Sumerian Gudea of Lagash (twenty-second century BCE Cylinder A cols. 1-12) and the Neo-Babylonian Nabonidus (sixth century BCE [Langdon
1912: Nbn 1 i 16-39, 4 ii 48-57, 8 vi 6-36]), is direct mediation to the king through
a dream-theophany: on this see Oppenheim (1956: 184-206). However, despite
these spectacular instances of direct mediation by dream, this is unlikely to have
been the normal means of communication of the divine will in the matter in
Mesopotamia. Nor is an oracle mediated through the dream of a third person (cf.
Nathan as receiving the oracle in 2 Sam. 7.4-17 at night): apart from the negative
instance at Mari (Kupper ARM XIII no. 112; Durand ARM XXVI no. 234; ANET b,
623-24; see further nn. 38, 46 below) I know of no other example. The royal texts
use a variety of terms for divine approval/instruction of royal plans, ranging from
the quite general, such as the verb qabu, 'tell, command', and its noun qibitu,
'command, instruction', and the noun zikru/siqru, 'behest, command', through the
less general, such as the noun annu, 'affirmative answer', to more specific terms,
such as is/Squ, 'lot, destiny', and Siru, 'ominous sign'. But it is evident that, in
accord with normal Mesopotamian practice, some form of divination as the means
of ascertaining the divine will lies behind all these terms. Compare the discussion
in Lackenbacher (1982: 65-66).
34. It seems to be characteristic of Egyptian texts that the pharaoh takes for
granted that, as himself having special access to the divine realm, his conceiving of
the plan is itself sufficient evidence of divine approval. Compare discussions of the
so-called 'Royal Novel' texts: Herrmann (1938), Otto (1952).
35. The inscriptions of Gudea (Cylinder A cols. 1-12), Esarhaddon, and
Nabonidus make fullest reference to divine approval, owing to the uncertainty and
hesitancy evinced by each of these monarchs. So, e.g., Esarhaddon Assur A III:
42
ana udduS biti Suatu 43akkud aplah 44arSa nid ahi 45[ina ma]kalti barute I
SamaS u Adad annu kenu ipulunima Sa epeS biti Satu udduS atmaniSu
6
u$a$tiru amutum (Borger 1956: 3), 'to renew that temple I hesitated with heartpounding fear, (but) Shamash and Adad gave me a reliable affirmative answer
through the priestly inspection of the offering, and inscribed on to a liver an omen
that I should build that temple and renew its shrine.'
36. Thus, e.g., Bruno Meissner: 'Nicht anders als ihre Babylonischen Kollegen
verfahren auch die assyrischen Herrscher. Bauten von Tempeln wurden seit jeher
immer nur auf Geheiss d.h. auf den durch Wahrsagekunst ermittelten Willen der
Gotter hin unternommen...' (1925: II, 245); 'The procedure of Assyrian rulers was
no different from their Babylonian counterparts. The building of temples was
259
consultation is always to be presupposed in Mesopotamian royal texts,

even when not explicitly mentioned. Certainly, support for accepting
this as a pragmatic presupposition in temple-building texts may be
derived from the frequent instances where, concerning the same building activity of the same king, one text will record consultation and/or
divine approval, and another version omit all mention.37
Yet I suspect that to assume such consultation for all temple-building
kings is an over-optimistic generalization, and that some at least may
have felt no need to consult the divine will in the matter. We are
unlikely to be reliably informed about such cases,38 even where they
were attended by disaster.39 But, given the religious underpinning to the
always and only undertaken at the behest of the gods, i.e. the expression of their
will as ascertained through divination...'). This sweeping assumption seems to be
shared by most writers on the subject. On the other hand, Ellis (1968: 6-7) points
out that stress on divine sanction, apart from Gudea, does not become a regular feature of building inscriptions until the second half of the second millennium, and is
particularly characteristic only of the later Sargonid and Neo-BabyIonian rulers,
where it reflected, in Ellis's view, something of a loss of confidence.
37. So, e.g., of a series of six inscriptions referring to the new Ishtar temple in
Ashur built by Tukulti-Ninurta I (ARI 1 nos. 11-16), only no. 11 mentions divine
approval: ina umeSuma ina Surru (L\JGAL)Sarrutiya d(INANNA)/ffar (NIN)
beltiya (E)bitu $ana...iri$anima, 'at that time, at the beginning of my sovereignty,
Ishtar my mistress requested from me another temple...' (text in RIM-AP 1
A.0.78.11 11. 82-84). Or again, of four inscriptions of Sennacherib concerning th
building of the Temple of the New Year's Feast (bit akitu) in Ashur (Luckenbill
1924: Ch. VIII a-e), only (a) mentions the seeking and gaining of divine permission: ana epe$ (E)bit akit libbi ublanima tern ^SamaS Adad almadma anna kini
ipuluinnima iqbuni epeSu, 'my heart moved me to build a temple [lit. 'make a
house'] of the New Year's Feast, the decision of Shamash and Adad I consulted,
they answered me with a reliable affirmative and commanded me to build' (text in
Schroder 1921: II, pp. 75-76 no. 122 11. 28-30).
38. Thus one wonders whether the dream-oracle reported by Kibri-Dagan to
Zimri-Lim (Dossin ARM XIII no. 112; Durand ARM XXVI no. 234; ANETb,
pp. 623-24), in which a god (? Dagan of Terqa) twice forbids Zimri-Lim to rebuild
a ruined house (presumably a temple), is a response to the absence of previous consultation on the matter by the king. But we lack any contextual information to verify such a supposition. I am unaware of any other example of this kind of divine
veto being recorded.
39. Thus we must be more wary than Ishida (1977a: 85-87) in taking slanted
statements as historical, whether they occur in building inscriptions implying lack
of consultation by or lack of divine favour to royal predecessors for the disaster
now being rectified in the current building project, as, e.g., claimed by Nebuchad-
260
royal ideology, it remains likely that all kings will have presumed such
support, and that some at least knew how to manipulate the royally
sponsored apparatus for consulting the divine will to produce the
desired response.40 Now I have shown in Chapter 5 above that, on the
one hand, David solicited divine support for a project about which he
had hesitations. Thus David can be seen to be behaving as would any
other ancient Near Eastern monarch in similar circumstances. But, on
the other hand, he coerced the right response from Nathan. In the light
of this context, the unlooked-for and immediate erasure by Yahweh's
oracle of Nathan's conventional assurance of expected divine support
(7.3) is freighted with polemical intent:41 the text's Yahweh will not
brook the burgeoning of such royal pretension in his 'subject/
underling'.
nezzar (Ishida 1977a: 87); or in propaganda texts, e.g. Curse of Agade (Ishida
1977a: 87-88), where Naram Sin's attack against the Ekur in Nippur is attributed to
his frustration at repeated negative divine response to his plans for the E-ulmas" in
Agade (Curse of Agade 11. 94-148, Cooper 1983: 55-57). These serve the interest
of their authors, and are as liable to be their inventions as real evidence of dereliction by those alleged. These and other such texts are indeed evidence that
Mesopotamians could entertain the idea of divine refusal and disfavour to a king.
But they actually only demonstrate its being entertained as an allegation to make in
propaganda against kings fallen out of favour.
40. Compare the assumption of concomitance between divine will and royal
inclination implicated in statements of Sargon II and Sennacherib: 154 ... ina
GlRSepa Sad musri elina NINAMnwakl I55ki tern DTNGIRilima ina bibil libbiya
URUala epuSma UR{JDur-$arru-ukin azkura nibitsu, 'at the foot of Mount Musri
above Nineveh, according to the decision of the god and the desire of my heart, I
built a city, I called it "Dur Sharrukin"' (Winckler 1889: I, 128; II pi. 35); 28itti
Siprimma Suati ana epeS (E)bit akit libbi ublanima 29tem ^SamaS dAdad almadma
anna ki<ni> ipuluinnima îqbuni epeSu, 'for that task, to build an akitu-temple,
my heart moved me, I enquired after the decision of Shamash and Adad, they
answered me with a reliable affirmative and commanded me to build' (Luckenbill
1924: Assurl.2,p. 137).
41. It is this issue in particular that Herrmann's (1953-54: 51-62 = 1986: 12044) too narrowly focused attempt to delineate 2 Sam. 7 in terms of the Egyptian
'Royal Novel' texts fails to explain convincingly: why would an ex hypothesi propaganda text for David and his dynasty so pointedly repudiate the king's plan,
rather than sycophantically uphold it in the style of the Egyptian texts? Herrmann's
later reflections on the matter (1985: 121-23) add nothing of substance to his original article.
261
7.2.3. AncientNear Eastern Royal Ideology in the Polemic of 2 Samuel?

But further, in bringing to their denouement these broad structurating
plot-cum-thematic elements from the ideology and practice of kingship
in the ancient Near East as it was manifested in Israel, 2 Samuel 7
employs a series of parodying allusions to various of its more detailed
elements, which are most concentrated in the oracular address of Yahweh (7.5-16). Much of the parody serves as oblique refutation or rejection of Judaean royal pretensions, here attributed to David. However,
some aspects of this royal ideology are adapted and adopted, but so as
to domesticate their more flamboyant features to an Israelite milieu, and
to skew their overall implicatures towards an acceptable account of
functional dynastic rule in Israel. The delimiting of the said milieu, and
the denning of what is acceptable within it are, of course, those of our
author, and the polemic involved is part of his rhetorical strategy aimed
at persuading the envisaged reader to share his view on these matters.
Let us trace the more operative of these detailed allusions within the
segments of 2 Samuel 7 in sequence.
7.2.3.1. Verses 1-3
First, 2 Sam. 7.1-3 parodies the ideological motif of the concomitance
of royal desire with divine will. Thus, besides the better-known but
less-frequent instances where the overcoming of royal hesitancy by
divine initiative is stressed,42 Mesopotamian royal texts widely attest
the idea that the respective building project was first envisaged by the
king and subsequently confirmed as their will by the gods.43 Now 7.2,
as we have shown, combines elements of assertiveness and hesitancy:
David takes the initiative, but in making a coercive yet oblique
approach to Nathan betrays his subliminal recognition that his initiative
42. Gudea, Esarhaddon and Nabonidus are the most prominent examples. It is
possible, however, that in some or all of these instances the narrative, being an
official royal text, puts a pious gloss on what was in fact the king's determination to
persist with consultation until the desired answer was obtained. In other words, the
reluctance may rather have been on the divine than on the royal side!
43. See n. 40 above for statements of Sargon II and Sennacherib. Similarly the
Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian queen Hatshepsut claims of temple repairs: 'I have
done this according to the design of my heart' Speos Artemidos inscription ARE II
303 11. 35-6; and again 'I have done this from a loving heart for my fathe
Amon...I did it under his command, he it was who led me; I conceived not any
works without his doing, he it was who gave directions.' Karnak Obelisk inscription AREll 316 South side 1. 8, West side 11. 1-2.
262
is serving his own rather than Yahweh's interests. Yet on the face of it,
the conventional ancient Near Eastern divine approval for the king's
initiative is forthcoming (7.3). But this serves only as a foil to Yahweh's immediate effacing of that 'approval' in 7.5-7.
That some kings at least might envisage a god withholding approval
for a royal building initiative is a probable presupposition in texts like
the Cylinder A of Gudea,44 and the inscriptions of Esarhaddon and
Nabonidus referred to above.45 More strongly, it is a clearly implicated
presupposition of the eighteenth-century BCE Mari letter from KibriDagan to Zimri-Lim, reporting a dream-oracle from an unidentified
god, received on two successive days, forbidding Zimri-Lim to proceed
with a temple-building project.46 What, however, to my knowledge is
unparallelled in ancient Near Eastern sources is the vouchsafing of
divine approval by a competent royal official (Nathan in 7.3), only for
this to be immediately withdrawn (Yahweh through Nathan 7.4-7). If
ever such a situation arose, it is unlikely that the king in question will
have publicized the fact.47 These considerations help to highlight the
44. Compare, e.g., the following comment of Falkenstein: 'Die Deutung des
Traumes, die Gudea von ihr [sell. Nina] erhielt, gab, wenn auch nicht detaillierte
Auskunft ilber technische Einzelheiten, so doch die Bestatigung, dass Ningirsu
selbst den Bau verlange. Dies musste von entscheidender Wichtigkeit sein, bestand
ja auch die Moglichkeit, dass eine Gottheit es einem Herrscher verweigerte, sich
von ihm em Heiligtum bauen zu lassen' (Falkenstein 1966: 118-19, my emphasis:
'The interpretation of the dream which Gudea obtained from her [soil. Nina] reassured him that Ningirsu himself desired the building, even if it did not inform him
about all the technical details. This [reassurance] must have been of decisive importance, especially since there was also the constant possibility that a deity might
refuse to allow a ruler to build him a sanctuary').
45. See above n. 35.
46. Compare on the second dream: Sa-ni-im u^-ma-am i-tu-ur Su-ut-ta-am it-tuul um-ma-a-mi Af<rnn(ilum)-ma E(bltam) an-ne-e-am la te-ep-pe-Sa te-ep-pe-$a-ma
a-na na-ri-im u-Sa-am-qa-as-su, 'The next day he had the dream-vision again, it
was the god: "Do not (re)build this house. If you rebuild it I will make it tumble
into the river" ' (Kupper ARMXIII no. 112 rev. 7-10'; cf. Durand ARMXXVI no.
234; ANET, b, p. 624). Clearly, the efficacy of this oracle depends on Zimri-Lim's
entertaining the possibility of a divine refusal, though, in accord with the indications in other Mari letters, we can assume that Zimri-Lim will have subjected the
oracle to verification by divination.
47. It is of course possible that Zimri-Lim had already had divine approval for
the project in question in the Mari letter referred to above. But we do not know this,
nor do we know whether the dream-oracle was in fact upheld and acted upon. In
any case, a piece of official royal correspondence was, and remained, a much more
263
polemic inherent in this forceful denouement in our text. David the

directive48 king, aping his ancient Near Eastern exemplars, and Nathan
the deferential courtier, aping his, are both seen to be decisively put in
their place within the divine economy for Israel by the text's Yahweh.
7.2.3.2. Verses 4-7
In the opening segment of Yahweh's speech (7.5-7) there are a number
of powerful resonances with elements in the royal building inscriptions.
The very opening question 'is it you who will build me a dwellinghousel (Tncf? JTQ "^ nnn nn^n 5b), and its discourse development
(6-7) use terminology that has close cognates in the cliches of Mesopotamian texts: the verb aSabu/uSeSib denotes the settling of the
god(dess) in her/his individual abode, itself often denominated by one
of the two derived nouns Subtu or muSabu.49 The temple is overwhelmingly termed bitu,50 just as it is called bayit in Hebrew. To make the
temple a resplendent abode worthy of the gods, GIEREN (erenu),
'cedar-wood' (thus D'TIN m 2 Sam. 7.7b, cf. 7.2a|J), although by no
means the only wood used,51 was highly favoured throughout the documented period of Mesopotamian temple-building.52 Yet all this Yahweh
robustly refuses. Moreover, when seen against the background of the
conventional joy and gratitude of Mesopotamian gods on taking up
their abode in the newly (re)built temple,53 Yahweh's absolute
private communication than most royal inscriptions.
48. While the terms in which David couches his approach to Nathan are, as we
have argued above, full of indirection, its intention is highly directive, as the
prophet's response bears out.
49. For the meaning and usage of these terms in general consult the relevant
CAD articles: aSabu 2.&.Y, muSabu l.a, Subtu 3.b.l'.2T.
50. In texts of all periods: see CAD, bitu 1 .c.
51. On this see Hurowitz (1992: 204-14).
52. Stretching from at least the time of Enanatum of Lagash (twenty-fifth century BCE, SARI I La 4.3, p. 49) to the last Neo-Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus, in th
sixth century.
53. Compare, e.g., the bilingual inscription of Samsu-iluna: e-babbar u-ud-di-iS
U6.NIR gi-gu-na-$u-<nu> si-ra-am re-Si-Sa ki-ma Sa-me-e u-ul-li dUTU dIKUR
d
a-a a-na Su-ub-ti-Su-nu el-le-tim in re-Sa-tim u hi-da-tim u-$e-rib, 'I renovated
Ebabbar, raised high as heaven the head of the ziqqurrat, their lofty gigunnu temple
(and) brought the gods Samas, Adad and Aia into their shining dwelling amidst joy
and rejoicing' (Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.3.7.3 11. 82-92, pp. 377-78; cf. 11. 13-21,
p. 376.
264
rejection54 here of David's initiative is highly polemical indeed.

Then further, in refusing this 'house of cedar', Yahweh asserts55 that
he had never asked for such a house from anyone56 'whom he had
appointed to shepherd his people, Israel' (7.7ap). Now the claim to be
'shepherd' (Sumerian sipa, Akkadian re'u[m]) of their people
appointed by the god(s) is frequently made by Mesopotamian kings,
often, and notably so for us here, in contexts commemorating their
divinely-appointed role as temple-builder.57 As a royal prerogative, the
claim to such divine appointment goes back at least to the twentyfourth century BCE Sumerian king Uru'inimgina (Urukagina).58 A good
example of its use by a Sumerian king in relation to temple-building in
particular may be seen in the hymn on the building of the Ekur temple
by the twenty-first century BCE founder of the Ur III dynasty, UrNammu,59 where it is a standing title, occurring some 12 times in the 71
lines of the text. It occurs constantly in the building inscriptions of
54. See the arguments above 5.3.1.2, and my remarks 9.2.2 below, against
the claims of, e.g., Mowinckel (1947), Mettinger (1976) and Ulshofer (1977).
55. More strictly, Yahweh's rhetorical question, in presupposing a negative
answer, implicates a negative assertion.
56. As our Masoretic Hebrew text stands, the reference appears to be a tribe.
But for discussion of this, and other suggested interpretations, and for argument in
favour of reference to an individual, see Murray (1987a), and above 5.2.1.2.
57. The claim is also made by Egyptian pharaohs, e.g. Senwosret (Sesostris) I
in an inscription commemorating the work on the temple of Atum at Heliopolis: 'he
[scil. the god] appointed me shepherd of this land' ARE I 502 11. 6.
58. Inscription on a clay ovoid offering-tag: dba-wax... uru-ka-gi-na nam-sipa$e mu-tu; 'Bau...gave birth to Urukagina for the role of shepherd' transcription of
cuneiform text in Sollberger (1956: Urukagina 51, 1 p. 61); cf. SARI I La9.14 q,
p. 83: 'Ba'u the...of Uruku bore Uru'inimgina for shepherdship is its name'. This
appears to be the first known occurrence, but the term is also instantiated for Lugalzagesi of Umma in the twenty-fourth century BCE, SARI I Um7.1, p. 94.
59. Text originally published by Chiera (1924: no. 11), re-edited with English
translation and commentary by Castellino (1959); translations by Falkenstein
SAHG 87-90; Kramer ANET 583-84. Note in particular 1.10 sipa dur-dnammu-k[e4
e]-kur-ra sag an-Se il-i-da d-bi mu-ug-da-dg', 'that Shepherd Urnammu should raise
very high the top of Ekur, he [sell. Enlil] gave the instructions' (Castellino 1959:
106, 108). Note also that in Sulgi hymn X 11. 53-55, Inanna designates Urnammu'
son and successor Sulgi as 'chosen shepherd' precisely in relation to his templebuilding and cult-maintenance role: sipa sa-ge-pa-da-x-ku-ga-me-en lugal u-azi-e-an-na-me-en 55Suba^(MUS.ZA)-iriK(AB)-gal-an-na-me-en, 'You, the chosen
shepherd of the holy temple?, You, the royal provider of the Eanna, You, the brilliant one of An's Irigal' (Klein 1981: 138-39).
265
Warad-Sin and his father Kudur-Mabuk,60 and later in those of Hammurapi.61 At the other end of the historical scale in Mesopotamia, we
find Esarhaddon62 in the seventh, and Nabonidus63 in the sixth, century
still asserting the same claim in inscriptions commemorating their
temple-building activities. In the light of this long-standing
Mesopotamian connection of the royal office of divinely appointed
'shepherd' and the king's duty and privilege as builder to the gods,
considerable polemical edge is felt in Yahweh's treating (in 2 Sam. 7.7)
as mere shared information64 that he had appointed some to shepherd
his people Israel, and moreover embedding this in a categorical denial
that he had ever instructed any of them to build him a 'house of cedar'!
The assertion of divine prerogative over against a burgeoning ancient
Near Eastern-style royal pretension is made more pointed through the
clear implicature of 7.7 that Yahweh's appointed 'shepherd' has no
need of such royal trappings, pretensions affected by none of David's
predecessors as Yahweh's shepherd.
7.2.3.3. Verses 8-2la
Thus it becomes impossible to avoid sensing not a little irony in Yahweh's now telling David (7.8a(3-b) that he took him away from shepherding to become 'leader' (T2]) over Yahweh's people, Israel! It looks
60. Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.2.13 passim; but note especially E4.2.13.16 11. 6ff
IR\\- EN.ZU u-a-e-kur-ra sipa sag-entar-e-kiS-nu-gdllu ni-tuk-eS e-babbar-ra,
etc., 'I, Warad-Stn, provider of the Ekur, shepherd who looks afer the EkiSnugal,
the one who reverences the shrine Ebabbar, etc.'.
61. Compare Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.3.6.14 11. 8-9 in connection with the Ebabba
of Samas in Sippar, E4.3.6.16 11. 9-10 in connection with the Ezikalama of Innan
in Zabala. Interestingly enough, in the building inscriptions of his son and successor, Samsu-iluna (E4.3.7), the term appears only in inscriptions dealing with
building that is at best indirectly cultic, not in those dealing with clearly cultic
building.
62. Compare, e.g., (SIPA)re'w? mat ASSur^1 tumallu [qatuja; 'you [scil. Marduk] inducted me into the office of shepherd of the land of Assyria' (Borger 1956:
16, Babylon A-G episode 11 11. 22-23), in connection with Esarhaddon's rebuildin
of the city of Babylon and its temple to Marduk, the Esagila.
63. Langdon (1912) Nabonid Nr. 2 i 2 re'u kinim 'reliable shepherd', 6 i 5 re'u
niSi rapSati, 'shepherd of numerous peoples', etc.
64. That is, "infer P 'QJJ fl filing VTTX IttfK ^tO&P 'B3BJ frDQ] 111N fTN,
'anyone [from all] of the tribes of Israel whom I appointed to shepherd my people,
Israel' is treated almost incidentally as knowledge held in common between Yahweh and his addressee, not as a major point in its own right.
266
Divine Prerogative and Koyal Pretension
very much as if, whereas re'u(m), 'shepherd', is treated as an entirely

concomitant role with $arru(m), 'king', in the Mesopotamian royal
texts, Yahweh in our text is deliberately setting his own view of what it
means to be nagid, 'leader', over against any high royalist pretensions
lurking in an equivalent Israelite use of ro'eh, 'shepherd'.65 Nonetheless, in expounding his different intention for David's governorship,
most of the points Yahweh makes in 7.8-11 have striking parallels in
numerous royal texts from the ancient Near East. I will focus here on
just one text which compactly expresses in the cliches of
Mesopotamian royal ideology virtually all66 of Yahweh's assertions.
The text67 is a prayer to the goddess Ishtar by an Assyrian king
Ashurnasirpal.68 Its structure combines hymnal praise of the goddess
Ishtar with exposition of her gracious exaltation of Ashurnasirpal to
kingship, and lamentation over the king's undeserved suffering from a
65. Note that our text, in speaking in 7.7ap of those instituted by Yahweh into
the function of a shepherd, avoids the nominal form ro'eh.
66. The significant exception is Yahweh's claim to have cut off all his enemies
before David (7.9ap), for which there is no parallel in the extant text of Ashurnasirpal's prayer, somewhat surprisingly perhaps for a prayer directed to Ishtar. However, the claim of divinely given victory over (all) enemies is such a common topos
in royal inscriptions, it hardly needs special illustration. I will refer here to just one
example from a building inscription of Samsu-iluna, where the divinities Zababa
and Estar specifically link the promise to a request for cultic renovation by the king:
samsu-iluna NUMUN Hi dari'um wusum Sarrutim en-lil Simatika uSarbi ana rabisutika in Sulmim epe&im uwa 'iranniati in imnika nillak za 'irika ninar ayabika ana
qatika numalla URU fa'.KI mahazni raSbam BAD-.? bini eli $a pana SuterSu, 'O
Samsu-iluna, eternal seed of the gods, one befitting kingshipEnlil has made your
destiny very great. He has laid a commission on us to act as your guardians for
(your) well-being. We will go at your right side, kill your enemies, and deliver foes
into your hands. (As for) Kis, our fear-inspiring cult city, build its wall, make it
greater than it was previously' Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.3.7.7 11. 63-79 s cf. 11. 30-47.
67. The text, together with transliteration and English translation, was originally
published by Briinnow (1890); an improved, French, translation with notes was
published by Seux (1976: 497-501) and a new edition of the text, with transliteration, German translation, and photographs was published by von Soden (1977). I
here follow the text and line numberings in von Soden.
68. There seems to be some doubt over which king of this name it conies from.
Briinnow (1890: 55) attributed it to a nineteenth- to eighteenth-century ruler, grandson of Ishme Dagan. Von Soden (1977: 38) attributed it to the eleventh-century
king, but Grayson (RIM-AP 2, p. 122) expresses doubts, and raises the possibility
of its belonging to a son of Tukulti Ninurta I at the end of the thirteenth century.
For our purposes the attribution and date make little difference.
267
persistent illness (11. 71, 77). Thus everything that is put into the mouth
of the king here promotes a 'you owe it to me' strategy of appeal to the
powerful tutelary goddess to come to the aid of her faithful but suffering protege.69 Accordingly, Ashurnasirpal twice expatiates on his pious
tendance of the goddess (17-20, 30-39), and within this double proof of
loyal service he frames an exposition of his royal calling, which implicates Ishtar's responsibility towards him in having called him (21-30).
The goddess took him (talqinima) from the obscurity of his mountain
birthplace and called him to 'shepherdship' (re'utu) over the peoples70
(22-27 cf. 2 Sam. 7.8), in order to establish peace and safety (28, 30 cf.
2 Sam. 7.10). In doing so she has made his name glorious (3, 29 cf.
2 Sam. 7.9b) But also she commissioned him to reinstate neglected
images (31), in fulfilling which task (33) Ashurnasirpal renewed their
temples (32), and restored their offerings (34), and dedicated to Ishtar
in the Emasmas a special golden bed (35-40).
In this exposition a not particularly subtle reciprocal do ut des dialectic is evident. On the one hand, the king acknowledges that he owes
his position to the goddess, but strongly hints that there was a good
measure of self-interest in Ishtar's graciousness towards him. On the
other, the king clearly sets out his response as going beyond the letter
of his commission, and thus the more deserving of reciprocal divine
acknowledgment, in the form of an answer to his prayer for relief (cf.
72-73). In other words, the king's role as temple-builder and maintainer
of the divine cults, here as elsewhere an ineluctable part of his divine
calling, gives him a somewhat ambiguous, but nonetheless real, basis of
69. Psalm 89 is another royal prayer with a broadly similar structure to this
prayer of Ashurnasirpal, serving a similar psycho-religious strategy. On this see my
Claim for Power (forthcoming). Seux (1976: 497 n. 1) concurs with von Soden in
classifying Ashurnasirpal's prayer as penitential, but nowhere does the king confess
any fault or wrongdoing (this is clearly not the intention of 1. 23 in its context), nor
express any repentance. On the contrary, the king protests at length his pious tendance on Ishtar and the gods (32-59), describes his suffering (60-70), puts the question 'how long?' (71), as preface to petitions for deliverance from a malady (7280), and ends with a vow of consequent praise (81-83): these are all typical elements of a lament.
70. 26/na niS eneki tudinima tahSuhi beluti 21 talqinima ultu qereb Sadi ana
SIPA-tu(re'utu) ina m'.?zmeS tabbinni, 'by the raising of your eyes you designated
me, and you desired my lordship; you took me from the the midst of the mountains,
and called me to shepherdship over the peoples' (von Soden 1974: 39).
268
demand on the gods, in fact a power which he can use to manipulate

them.71
But the career for David, very similar to that expounded concerning
himself by Ashurnasirpal to Ishtar, is in 2 Sam. 7.8-1 la expounded the
opposite way around, that is, by Yahweh to David, with the opposite
intention in mind. Following up as it does Yahweh's categorical refusal
of David's temple-building initiative, Yahweh's words stress the absolute and constant priority of his own initiative, with not the slightest
suggestion that it involves any self-interest, which David could exploit
to his own ends. Far from it! Yahweh's prime concern in all of this is
for the welfare of his people, for whom, through the instrumentality of
71. For a clear expression of the idea that the king's temple-building and cultmaintenance is the basis of reward by the gods cf. the following from Samsu-iluna:
ana Suati d\JTU($amag) mu 'uli reS SarrutiSu balatam tub libbim daram Sarrutam
Sa la i$u...ana qiStiSu iddiSum, 'on account of this the god Samas, who exalts his
kingship, gave to him as a gift life, everlasting happiness, kingship that has no
rival,...' (Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.3.7.3 11. 107-23, my emphasis) apropos of his reno
vation of the Ebabbar in Sippar. Compare E4.3.7.7 11. 128-38 apropos of his reno
vation of the cult city of KiS for Zababa and Etar; and E4.3.7.5 11. 67-83, E4.3.7.
11. 77-89 apropos of his renovation of fortresses. Similarly, Posener draws attention
to the frequent occurrence in Egyptian royal inscriptions of verbs and nouns
signifying 'payment, recompense' to designate the divine response to the pharaoh's
cultic activity, citing the following example from Neferhotep I: 'My majesty has
made these monuments for my father Osiris-Khentamenti, lord of Abydos, because
I so much loved him more than all the other gods, that he may he give me due
return (tsw) for what I have done, (namely) millions of years. The recompense
(mtnj.t) to him who acts comes from what he does: that is the just decree of the
gods' (Great Abydos Stela 11. 42-3: Posener 1960: 40-41, freely rendered; cf. ARE I
765). From the Syrian milieu cf. the following from the eighth century inscription
of Panammu:
12
I3
14
' 12 ...In the days of my authority...would I offer to the gods, and they used to
accept (them) from my hand; and what I asked from the gods, they used always to
give 13to me. Favour did my god.. .the son of QRL continually. Then if ever Hadad
gave to me, he used always to call on me to build; and during my rule 14he did
always give, and did always call on me to build. So I have built, and I have raised a
statue for this Hadad, and a place for Panammu, son of QRL, king 15of Y'DY'
(Gibson 1975: no. 13, p. 66).
269
David and his dynasty, he is creating a safe haven.72 Hence not only is
David's house-building initiative rejected out of hand, butand this is
the capstone of Yahweh's whole argumentit is superseded in the
fullest sense by Yahweh's own house-building initiative for David
(7.lib). Divine prerogative completely banishes royal pretension from
the field. Thus does our text brilliantly turn the conventions of ancient
Near Eastern royal texts73 on their head to deflate the pretensions of the
text's David.
Yahweh's promise of making David an enduring house (7.lib, 16),
therefore, far from being payback for David's care for Yahweh74
according to the implicated logic of ancient Near Eastern royal building
texts,75 is at once the capping of his rejection of David's temple72. Here 2 Sam. 7.8-10 appears to be parodying the end of Exod. 15.1-18, or at
any rate putting its own gloss on that text. Just as in Exod. 15.1-18 Yahweh delivers
his people (P^tO IT DJJ 15.13a) from their oppressors, and brings them safely to
plant them in the security of his own abode ("[P^n] ~I!~Q IQ^QP 15.17aa), so
through David Yahweh is delivering his people (^tntZT1? "Q^ 7.10aa) from their
oppressors and giving them a secure abode in which Yahweh will plant them (DIpQ
(rnnn pah TIMDTI... 7.10aa). But whereas -\ronh pDO, 'your secure dwellingplace', and ETIpQ, 'sanctuary', in Exod. 15.17 employ language typical of 'temple
as divine abode' discourse, Yahweh has emphatically repudiated that here 7.5-7.
73. For evidence of similar mutual indebtedness of god and king in Egyptian
sources, see Posener 1960: 37-41, and note in particular his comment: 'A chaque
geste rituel, a chaque action ou declaration du roi au profit de la divinite, correspond 1'octroi par celle-ci d'une ou plusieurs graces; 1'un suscite 1'autre d'une
fa9on quasi automatique' (1960: 40: 'for every ritual action, for every deed or declaration by the king in the interests of the god, the latter graciously grants one or
more gifts; each sustains the other in a way that is all but automatic').
74. This logic, however, very clearly informs the high royal Ps. 132: on this see
my brief remarks in Murray (1993: 83-84), and in more detail in Claim for Power
(forthcoming).
75. For a clear example of this in a building inscription cf. the following from
the thirteenth century BCE Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser I (Ebeling 1926: XXI. 1 1
27-34 corrected): enuma a$$ur (EN)belu ana (E)biti Sau iba'uma (BARA)
parakkaSii sira hadiS iramu epSeti nimurti (E)biti Satu limurma lihda unninia lilqe
tesliti USme Simat Sulum (SlD)$angutiya (NUMUN)zer (lD)$angutiya nuhuS(!)
(BALA) paleya ina (KA)plSu (DUGUD)kabti ana um sati (GAL)rabi$ litasqar,
'When Ashur the lord enters that temple and joyfully takes his place on the lofty
dais, may he rejoice to see the splendid work of that temple. May he receive my
petitions, may he hear my supplications: may he abundantly decree in perpetuity
270
building initiative and the crowning of his own enduring initiative in

the career of David. That Yahweh's divinely guaranteed house for
David is so precisely counterposed to David's royally-proposed house
for Yahweh (1 Ib in close chiastic parallelism to 5b), not as a wheedling
petition from the meritorious temple-building king,76 but as an unsolicited and unmerited oracle of promise from the temple-rejecting god,
sharpens its polemical edge.77 Moreover, this unlooked-for oracle,
which opposes as exclusive contraries Yahweh's certain making of a
royal house against David's intended building of a divine house, continues to set Yahweh's exposition of his promise against this quite particular background of royal ideology and practice, the ideology and
practice of temple-building.78 For elements which, in building inscriptions, appear as petitions to the god(s) by the successful templebuilder79 are here Yahweh's firm undertakings to the prevented templewith his mighty utterance a destiny of well-being for my priestly rulership, (i.e.)
progeny for my priestly rulership, and a reign of plenty.' So, again, Tiglath Pileser I
at the turn of the twelfth-eleventh century BCE in his petitions to Anu and Adad
trades on his alacrity in attending to repairs of their temples (Grayson RIM-AP 2
A.O. 87.1 viii 17-38; 1972: 2 58, pp. 18-19) etc.
76. It is quite a frequent element in the royal prayer to the god(s) which is a
standard part of the Mesopotamian building inscriptions: cf., e.g., the text from
Shalmaneser I in the preceding note.
77. To see this is to appreciate more deeply the rhetorical mastery in the balanced correspondence of 7.11 b to 7.5b and in the polemic which leads from one to
the other, and thus to understand the degree to which 7.13a deforms and reorientates that rhetoric. Hence my profound difference of reading from those who accord
7.13a the privilege it seeks (e.g. Mowinckel 1947, Mettinger 1976, Ishida 1977a,
and to some extent Eslinger 1994).
78. This feature of our text, very material to its overall polemic, but one which
is explicitly developed in 2 Sam. 7, should not be obscured by too promiscuous a
drawing of parallels from the wide range of ancient Near Eastern royal texts. In
their different ways both Calderone 1966 and Ishida 1977a, failing to see this sharp
polemic, blur its outlines and reduce its salience by discussions of 'parallels' not
sufficiently focused on the rhetoric of the texts, biblical and ancient Near Eastern,
being set in parallel.
79. The bilingual dedicatory Tell Fekheriye inscription (texts and French translation in Abou-Assaf, Bordreuil and Millard (1982); English translation in Millard
and Bordreuil (1982: 137-38) includes highly conventional 'royal' petitions, similar
to those cited in the following paragraphs: DIS(ana) Tlut&ullut) Zl.MES(nap5ati)M GID.DA(arafe) to.MES(ume)-$u Sum-ud MUME$(Sanati)-$u SlUM(Mum)
E(biti)-M MJMUN(zere)-M u UN.MES(ne)-Jfw (Assyrian text 11. 10-12); Ihyy :
nbSh : wlm'rk : ywmrh wlkbr : Snwh : wlSlm : byth : wlSlm : zr'h : wlSlm : 'nSwh
271
builder. That Yahweh's promises are thus made in the context of a

supererogatory divine oracle that refutes David's plan to build a temple
is the operative context for the assertions of our text. Although some
parallels to these assertions may also be found in the seventh-century
Assyrian prophecy texts as divine undertakings to the king, these are
not premised on the god's rejection of the king's temple-building and
maintenance of the temple-cult. Far from it! Indeed, in at least one such
oracle Ishtar of Arbela chides Esarhaddon for his neglect of her cult,
despite her support of him against his enemies.80
Chief among such royal solicitings is continued divine support for his
reign. Mostly this takes the form of the king requesting a long and
prosperous reign for himself.81 However, not infrequently the templebuilder will ask the god(s) to secure the perdurance of his rule to his
descendants. This can be seen at a fairly undeveloped level in the
inclusion by Shalmaneser I of 'royal progeny' (zer Sangutiya, lit. 'progeny of my priestly rulership') in his petition for divine blessing on his
reign arising from his successful temple-building.82 For a different style
of the same basic petition compare Nebuchadnezzar II (sixth century
BCE) to Marduk at the end of an inscription detailing work on various
(Aramaic text 11. 7-9), 'for the life of his soul, (and) for the length of his days, (and
for increasing his years, (and) for the prosperity of his house, (and for the prosperity) of his descendants, (and for the prosperity) of his people' (translation from
Millard and Bordreuil 1982: 137). But this text makes no explicit reference to
temple-building by the dedicatee. The statue is, however, dedicated to Hadad and
his brother gods, and was set up in his shrine by one hdys'y, who identifies himself
as the Sakin (GAR, Assyrian text 1. 8) = mlk (Aramaic text 1. 6) of Guzan. Moreover, the two sets of standard curses against possible despoliation of the statue by
future restorers of the shrine (Assyrian 11. 15-18, 26-38; Aramaic 10-12, 16-23)
import a context of temple-building, if somewhat obliquely.
80. Thus an example from the divine side of the interdependence of god and
king: K2401 15-36 in Weippert (1981: 87-88), and see also his summary indication in Tabelle 4, p. 115 of cultic instructions in four other oracles in the set.
81. Thus, e.g., in a prayer to Shamash and Aya, following his attention to their
Sippar shrine Ebarra Nabonidus asks (Langdon 1912: Nbn 2): ii...9araku ume
Sarrutiya liSSakin ina pika 10ma nurika namri lulabbir talakka ana itraka I2likun
palua.. .23G kussu Sarrutiya lulabbir adi Sebi littutu, '.. .9from your mouth let it be
established that the days of my kingship be long! 10In your glorious light grant me
to extend umy career! Under your tutelage(?) 12may my dynasty be firmly established ... 23may my royal throne endure to the end of a long life!'
82. For the text see above n. 75.
272
temples: 'may my descendants wield authority in perpetuity within her

[scil. Babylon] over the black-headed'.83
A yet more elaborate and revealing form of this petition, however,
also addressed to Marduk, is to be found in an inscription of the seventh
century BCE Assyrian King Esarhaddon, concerning his rebuilding of
the Esagila temple of Marduk in Babylon: 'grant that my royal progeny
(zer Sangutiya) be established unto distant days like the foundationstone of the Esagila and of Babylon!'84 Here the tit-for-tat relation
between the king's temple-building on behalf of the god and the god's
support of the dynasty is as palpably being traded upon as is the similar
relation in the Davidic high royal Psalm 132.
The intimately related granting to David's descendants of a firmly
established royal throne in perpetuity (7.13b, 16b) also finds a close
analogue in a long-standing motif within the Mesopotamian royal ideology. Thus Kudur-Mabuk (nineteenth century BCE) prays to Nannar,
following his restoration of Ganunmah, 'a decree of life, a prosperous
reign, a throne securely founded as a present may he grant me',85 a petition frequently made in royal building inscriptions. Three instances
from the other end of the history of Mesopotamian kingship between
them parallel the main elements of 2 Sam. 7.12apyb, 13b. First, the seventh-century Neo-Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal affirms divine support of
his kingship in connection with his temple-building and cult-maintenance responsibilities, using an expression (kussi Sarrutiya) closely
parallel to 'his royal throne' (irD^QD NOD 7.13b; cf. 16).86 Then more
elaborately, and with the element of perpetuity added, the founder of
the Neo-Babylonian dynasty Nabopolassar, following his restoration of
the Etemenanki in Babylon, prays to Marduk: 'just as the brickwork of
83. lipua ina qirbiSa ana dariatim salmat qaqqadim libelu (Langdon 1912:
Nebuchadnezzar no. 9 col. Ill 11. 56-59).
84. zer Sangutiya itti temen Esagil u Babilikl likun ana ume sati (Borger 1956:
26-27 Ep. 39 11. 6-9).
85. Gadd-Legrain 1928: 1 no. 123 11. 43-47; RJM-EP 4 E4.2.13.1011. 28-47.
86. 9...ana kunni sattukki zanan eSreti aM[uh] }0da$!>ur dnin-lil u dnergal
ilanime* rabuti* ukinnu Hid kussi Sarrutiya, 'I w[anted] to establish the daily
offerings, and to provide for the sanctuaries; Ashur, Ninlil and Nergal, the great
gods, established the foundation of my royal throne' (Streck 1916: 178 Tontafelinschrift 5 obv. 11. 9-10). The expression kussi Sarruti is quite frequent in roya
inscriptions: cf. further, e.g., Schroder (1921: 2, 83, 9); Langdon (1912: Nabonidus
no. 2 col. II1. 23), etc.
273
the Etemenanki is laid down for ever, so may he firmly lay the foundation of my throne for the distant future'.87 Finally, in the sixth century,
Nabonidus on his Hillah stela concerning the restoration of the Ehulhul
in Harran closely links his similar petition with a plea for an enduring
dynasty: 'for life in distant days, a firmly established throne, an enduring dynasty, (with) well-turned words before Marduk my lord I
supplicate' ,88
On the other hand, the establishing for David's descendants of a
father-son relationship with Yahweh (7.14a) is an element hard to parallel from the exemplars of royal ideology in either Mesopotamian or
West Semitic texts.89 I am unaware of anything comparable in templebuilding texts.90 Yahweh's point in elaboration (7.14b.l5) of this relationship, however, whereby the wrongdoing of David's successors,
although it will be punished, will not abrogate Yahweh's commitment
to the relationship, does find some sort of analogue in the Mesopotamian building inscriptions. Thus Nabonidus prays that his own deeds
87. kima (SlG4)libnat E.TEMEN.AN.KI kunna asiatim (SUHUS)tfzW
^(GU.ZA)kussiya SurSid ana (U4um)wm requtim (Langdon 1912: Nabopolassar
no. 1 col. Ill 11. 47-49). Note here again the obvious tit-for-tat rationale underlyin
the petition.
88. ana (TIN)balat (U4.MES)wme ruquti kunnu GI(GU.ZA)fomJ labar pale
dummuqa amatua ina mahar (AM.AR.UTU)Marduk usalliSunuti (Langdon 1912:
Nbn7vii6~10).
89. The standard Egyptian notions of the pharaoh as son of Re, and the living
Horus (son) to the Osiris (father) of his deceased predecessor, even noting th
caveats of Posener against reading too much into these claims (e.g. 1960: 8-12), are
too different in conception to be relevant.
90. Ishida (1977a: 91, under 9) cites a line from a prophecy addressed to
Esarhaddon, in a text originally published by Langdon: anaku (AD)abuka
(AMA)ummuka birti agappiya urtabika; 'I am your father and your mother, within
my wings I nurtured you' (Langdon 1914: PI. Ill 11. 20-21; Langdon's translation o
1. 21 is 'The fortress of my wings shall take thee captive', reading taStabika for
urtabika, p. 140; the text is listed as no. 7 in Weippert (1981: Tabelle 1, 112), but
not cited by him). Ishida provides no contextualization for this oracle, but it
appears, from the extant portion, to be an oracle from Ishtar of Arbela to reassure
Esarhaddon of her help and protection against his enemies, one of a collection of
similar oracles conveyed to the king. The text does not record the circumstances of
the uttering of any of these oracles, but none of them mentions temple-building, nor
does this particular oracle refer to the king's successors. Thus the particular futureoriented dynastic element of Yahweh's promise here is lacking in this 'parallel', as
is the specific focus on a firm parental discipline which will not abrogate the relationship.
Gl
274
may be acceptable before Shamash and Ay a,91 and that his son and heir
Belshazzar may not fall into sin!92 In thus praying to avoid wrongdoing
and to act acceptably the king's words at least implicate both the possibility of royal wrongdoing (cf. 7.14b), and the further possibility that
such wrongdoing would curtail the divine goodwill to his dynasty, built
up by the king's own acts of piety in temple-building.
However, the concatenation here of a father-son relationship (7.14a)
with royal wrongdoing (7.14b), and the assurance of continued divine
commitment (7.15a) is reminiscent of the forms of discourse encountered in a different ancient Near Eastern genre, the vassal treaties.93
Moreover, ion hesed, 'loyalty, commitment', in a relationship does
occur elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible in connection with international
relations.94 This has led many to argue from analogy that Yahweh is
here concluding a covenant with David, in which Yahweh assumes a
role comparable to the great king in the vassal treaties, and David is
given that of the vassal king.95 However, there are a number of material
features of our text which are against seeing this analogy as constitutive
for 2 Samuel 7.
First, the major context for Yahweh's words, as I have already
shown, and as will continue to be apparent, is that of temple-building
texts and their associated royal ideology. These texts express a profoundly ideological view of the relationship of god(s) and king, and it is
91. mahar dSamSi u dA-a lidamqa epSetua, 'may my deeds be acceptable before
Shamash and Aya' (Langdon 1912: Nbn no. 2 ii 24-25). The immediate reference
here could simply be to his deeds of cultic restoration for these two divinities.
However, the role of Shamash as the all-seeing divine judge, and the general nature
of the petition for Belshazzar quoted in the following note may well suggest a more
general reference here.
92. mdbel-Xar-ussur maru reStu [sit] libbiya Suriku umeSu ay irSa hititi, 'make
long the days of Belshazzar my firstborn son, my own [offspring], and grant he may
not fall into sin' (Langdon 1912: Nbn 4 ii 26-27).
93. The most striking parallels are found in a thirteenth-century Hittite treaty
between Tudhaliyas IV and Ulmi/Duppi-TeSub of Dattasa: see the translation in
McCarthy (1981: Appendix 3, 303-307). Here the Hittite suzerain promises to keep
rule of Dattasa within the house of Ulmi-TeSub, even if a son or grandson should
sin (11. 5-14).
94. Of treaty relations between David and Nahash of Ammon, 2 Sam. 10.2.
Compare also 2 Sam. 2.5 in the context of 2.7: here of political, not specifically of
international, relations.
95. This view was set forth by De Vaux (1967, ET 1972), further elaborated by
Calderone (1966) and adopted by many.
275
the controverting of leading elements of this ideology, and the transformation of others into elements acceptable to our author, that drives
Yahweh's polemic here. To my knowledge such texts never invoke a
suzerain-vassal analogy for the god-king relationship, and nor do
treaty texts have any organic connection with temple-building and the
associated ideology of god and king. Hence if treaty-type language is
being drawn upon here in Yahweh's discourse, it is to make a particular
point: it is not the main driving force behind his words.
But then, second, when treaty texts talk about a vassal's wrongdoing,
the reference is quite patently to his hypothesized contravention of the
treaty's specific stipulations, that is, the terms it imposes on the vassal,
and is aimed at deterring such contravention.96 The whole point of
2 Sam. 7.14b-15 is that such terms are not even envisaged, let alone
imposed on David's descendants. Indeed, the hypothesized fact of their
wrongdoing is taken as a given, for which non-drastic punishment is
provided. Thus reference to their wrongdoing is both contextually
undefined in 7.14b,97 unlike the alleged parallels in the treaties but
more like the Nabonidus parallels adduced above, and also quite different in function from those in the treaties.
Third, our text does not in fact use the term rmD berit, 'agreement,
compact, covenant', to characterize the relationship Yahweh is setting
out here. Now, although I accept in general the proposition that a
notion may be present when the specific term for that notion is not itself
present, nonetheless, we must always ask ourselves in any specific
instance9* where we are inclined to suppose this, why the ex hypothesi
96. Compare, e.g., the treaty of Adad-Nirari V with Mati'ilu of Arpad, ANET,
532b-533b, where the expression ina ode hatu, 'to sin against this treaty-oath',
recurs numbers of times in connection with various specified stipulations. The contraventions are the subject of a curse ritual to be invoked against the vassal if he
should err. Similarly, in the eight-century Sefire stelae the standard term for contravention by the vassal of the terms of the treaty is the politically-coloured verb ~lp2J,
rendered 'deal falsely' by Gibson (Gibson 1975: no. 7 1. 14, and often). The
detailed stipulations (Gibson no. 9) all concern sociopolitical relations between the
parties.
97. The appropriate pragmatic definition is moot. To presuppose, as most do,
the idea of 'Sinai covenant' with its associated law is to presuppose something a
great deal more specific than anything our text warrants. On this see further the
author's remarks in his review of Eslinger (1994) (Murray 1995: 210-12).
98. If we do not, we are liable to fall into the fallacy of 'the undistributed
middle', i.e. to assume without warrant the applicability to a particular instance of
276
appropriate term is not being used. Now given that berit is used four
times in Psalm 89" of Yahweh's dynastic promise to David, there
expressed in language closely comparable to our present text, our
author's coyness in shunning the term is odd indeed, if his intention
was to present that promise as a covenant.100
Moreover, this view skates around the fact that our text addresses
most of the divine undertakings to David's descendants, and not to
David himself as in Psalm 89. These differences are very material to
the different rhetoric of each text. Psalm 89 is an urgent dynastic appeal
to Yahweh, when that dynasty is under dire threat, to honour his inviolable commitment to the dynasty as made to their revered ancestor
David.101 Hence that text makes salient the element of obligation on
Yahweh, by repeatedly stressing the divine commitment as a bent
entered into with a deserving forefather. Our text on the contrary is
Yahweh's polemical exposition to the dynasty's progenitor of the circumscribed nature and function within his economy for Israel that
Yahweh is pleased to bestow upon the dynasty. Hence it is not in the
text's interests to make Yahweh obligate himself to the dynasty. To
have done so would have played right into the hands of the dynasty's
high royal pretensions, the very thing our text is seeking to deflate. That
is why it does not envisage Yahweh's promises here as a berit.
Thus if 7.14-15 is drawing on language more at home in treaty texts,
it is recontextualizing this language into a text whose basic form and
message stem from a different paradigm. The dominant motifs and
ideas of this paradigm, as we have seen, derive from the ideology and
practice of royal temple-building. But these motifs and ideas are being
recontextualized within a specifically Israelite view of the relationship
of god and king. Moreover, our text is itself seeking, through its persuasive appeal, to create in Israel its own new context, a context in
which our author's understanding of how a 'royal' dynasty may fulfil a
something that is sometimes or often, but not always, the case. Biblical studies are
littered with instances of this fallacy being perpetrated.
99. 89.4, 29, 35,40[3, 28, 34, 39].
100. It is also of significance in this connection that the paraphrase of 2 Sam. 7.216 put into the mouth of Solomon (1 Kgs 8.15-20, 23-26) designates Yahweh's
promise as a bent only by oblique implicature in 8.23-25. On both Ps. 89 and 1 Kgs
8.15-26, see my Claim for Power (forthcoming).
101. Compare especially the petition section of the Psalm, vv. 39-52[38-51].
211
positive role in Yahweh's dealings with his people Israel can be

accepted and put into effect.102
7.2.3.5. Verses 18-29
We need not draw out our consideration of the background of our text
in ancient Near Eastern royal ideology in too much more detail, since
by now enough has been said to more than establish the connections,
and their importance in understanding the polemic involved. In any
case, David's prayer naturally reflects upon the motifs of Yahweh's
discourse,103 especially of its third segment, so that the evidence we
have presented above for the connection of these with the royal ideology of the temple-building texts does not need to be repeated here. To
indicate how David's prayer continues to draw on and transform this
background will suffice.
A royal prayer following the account of building and installation is a
standard element in building inscriptions, brief and to the point in the
earlier exemplars, long and discursive like David's prayer by the time
we reach Nabonidus. Further, the self-deprecating style of address finds
numerous parallels in these texts. As one example of this, compare
David's opening expression of unworthiness before Yahweh, 'who am
I and what is my house, that you have brought me to this point?'
(7.18a), followed later by an expression of Yahweh's incomparability,
'accordingly you are great, Lord Yahweh, for there is none like you,
etc.' (7.22), with the inscription of Kudur-Mabuk already referred to
above: 'Nannar, my king art thou; thou hast done it, as for me, who am
j<a7>104
Apropos of David's concluding supplication to Yahweh of Hosts in

7.25-29, passages in prayers in building inscriptions of Esarhaddon105
and Ashurbanipal106 evince a similar set of concerns. In particular
102. This does not necessarily have to be in a political context precisely matching that reflected in the text, as I have recently argued in relation to the portrayal of
the Davidic dynasty in Chronicles: see Murray (1993: esp. 89-92). But the likelihood is that our author was writing during the later monarchy.
103. For this in detail, see the close reading of the prayer, above 5.2.2.1-3.
104. Frayne RIM-EP 4 E4.2.13.10 11. 22-24, closely echoed by his son Warad
Sin E4.2.13.16 11. 42-44. Compare E4.2.13.3 11. 32-34 for Kudur-Mabuk saying t
same to Nergal in an inscription commemorating the building of his temple by
Kudur-Mabuk.
105. See the passage quoted above, n. 84.
106. 31ana Satti dNabium belu sirru 3SepSeteya damqati hadiS lippalism[a] 39iati
278
divine blessing (7.29) of a temple-builder requested or given is a frequent element in royal inscriptions.107 At the end of Gudea's long
account of his building the Eninna for Ningirsu in Lagash, Ningirsu
turns and blesses the king.108 Tiglath Pileser I prays for blessing in
return for his temple-building,109 and a text of Esarhaddon reveals the
intimate connection between royal temple-building and divine blessing.110 Thus in its closing petition 2 Samuel 7 tellingly parodies this
stock motif in building inscriptions, by starkly divorcing David's
request for divine blessing from any possible warrant in royal templebuilding.
7.3. Concluding Remarks
These indicative parallels to David's prayer suffice to show that, both
formally and in content, this prayer also invokes the conventions of
royal building inscriptions. But, and this is the nub of the matter, in the
context of Yahweh's rejection of David's temple-building plan,
ld
ASSur-ban-aplu rubu palihSu 40amat damiqtiya USSakin SaptuSSu 4lbalat ume

ruquti Sebe littutu 42tub Seri hud libbi liSim 4^$imati iSid kussu Sarrutiya 44kima
Sadi USarSid itti 45$ame u ersitim lukin palua, '37in years (to come) may Nabu the
exalted lord look with joy upon my good works, and for me, Ashurbanipal, the
prince who reveres him, 40may a gracious word be set upon his lips: 41a long and
successful life, 42soundness of body and happiness of mind as my destiny 43may he
determine, the foundation of my royal throne ^may he ground like the mountains,
with 45the heavens and the earth may he firmly establish my rulership' (Streck
1916: 242 Prunkinschriften Nr. 6 stele S 2 ).
107. For an example from the Egytian milieu, cf. the prayer at the end of the
inscription of the eighteenth-century pharaoh Neferhotep on the remaking of a
statue of Osiris at Abydos: 'Behold my majesty has made these monuments for my
father, Osiris, first of Westerners, Lord of Abydos, because I so much loved him,
more than all gods; that he might give to me a reward for this...consisting of millions of years...' (ARE I 765 11. 39-40).
108. Cylinder B col. xxii-xxiv 8: note especially xxiv 7-8: 1[gu]-de-a [du]mudingir-nin-gi$-zi(d)-da-ka 8nam-ti(l) [h]a-mu-ra-su(d), 'may the life of Gudea, son
of the god Ningishzida, be prolonged!'
109. Grayson RIM-AP 2 A.O. 87.1 viii 35.
110. Borger 1956 Ass A vii: I6unih uggatsu llA$$ur Sar Hani1 l*ep$eteya
damqate I9keni$ ippalisma 20elis libbaSu 2lkabattu$ immir 22ikrib umem^ ruquti*
23
ikrubanima 24banu biti25$umi imbi, <17Ashur, king of the gods, I6calmed his
anger, 18my good works 19he duly looked upon and 20his heart rejoiced, 21his spirit
rose. 23He vouchsafed me 22the blessing of long life (lit. 'distant days'), 25he named
me 24"builder of temples." *
279
David's prayer is a polemical deformation of the standard royal prayer

in building inscriptions. For in their context in the Mesopotamian texts,
the kings' prayers petition the gods to grant the kings' requests on the
basis of what the kings have done for the gods through their building
and restoration. Thus all the elements from the building inscriptions we
cited above as parallels to Yahweh's discourse come, not from equivalent divine discourses, but from the royal prayers in those texts: that is,
none of them in those texts is a promise made by a god to a king, but
rather all are fervent petitions addressed to the god(s) by the respective
kings. Thus here in David's prayer in 2 Samuel 7 the 'parallel' situation
continues to be turned on its head. David prays to a god who has decisively rejected his initiative to build him a temple, but who has already
on his own sovereign initiative promised unsolicited to David the kinds
of thing so earnestly sought from their gods by the royal templebuilders. Hence David's prayer is not in essence a fervent plea, though
that element is also present, nor is it a thinly disguised request for a titfor-tat response from Yahweh. Rather it is a wondering acknowledgment of the unmerited and sovereign benevolence of Yahweh towards
himself and his house. So perceived, the prayer clinches the text's insistent polemic against the royal pretension which we have seen David
more and more assuming within our stretch of text, until this climactic
point.
Perhaps nothing dramatizes this more than David's leaving his own
'house of cedar' to go before Yahweh in his simple tent-shrine in order
to offer this prayer. The point we have made about this earlier111 takes
on even greater significance when seen against the situation where
ancient Near Eastern kings bring the gods to visit them in their imposing new palaces. Tiglath Pileser I, in an inscription concerning the dedication of his splendid new cedar-palace Egallugalsharrakurkurra, evidently indicates that it was standard practice to bring the gods to palace
dedicatory feasts.112 So too Sennacherib records the visit of Ashur and
other Assyrian divinities to his new 'palace without a rival'.113 In our
111. See above 6.1.3, 6.3.
112. Grayson ARI2 p. 29 105 (77).
113. [dA$$ur] belu rabu ilanime* u Di$taratime* aSibuti lAS$ur** ina qirbiSa aqrima
lu
mgeme5 taSrihti aqqima uSatlim qadraai, 'Ashur the great lord (and) the gods and
goddesses who dwell in Assyria I summoned into it [scil. the palace], I made worthy offerings and presented my welcome-gifts' (Luckenbill 1924: Ch. VI, 98 A 1 1
92 [BM113203]).
280
text, far from having Yahweh visit him in his splendid new cedar
palace to bestow his blessing upon it, David fails dramatically to
vouchsafe the blessing of Yahweh of Hosts to his household (6.20). It
is only when he forsakes this grand symbol of his royal pretension so as
to defer fully before Yahweh that he gains the assurance of that blessing
as freely bestowed by Yahweh of Hosts (7.29).
Clearly, then, our text is familiar with many of the conventions and
cliches observable in ancient Near Eastern royal texts, notably with
those known to us from Mesopotamian building texts. Whether such
texts could have been directly known to our author cannot be determined, but, in any case, it is not necessary for my argument to claim so.
In whatever way this knowledge was mediated to him, enough has been
said above to show how our text is parodying the conventions of both
form and expression in suchlike texts, in order to establish in a strongly
polemical way a different view of the relationship of god and king from
that which they articulate. The strength of the polemic almost certainly
indicates how entrenched within the Judaean royal court our author
feels this high royal ideology to have become, as does also the extent of
the compromise effected in the text between its claims and those of the
nagid ideology presented as its ideal opposite. To an account of this latter ideology we shall now turn in the next chapter.
Chapter 8
YAHWEH AND DAVID THROUGH DIFFERENCE AND DEFERENCE 2:

AN INTRATEXTUAL CONTEXT TO THE POLEMIC
IN 2 SAMUEL 5.17-7.29
The preceding chapter sought to delineate a context of understanding
both appropriate and adequate to our text's polemic against the pretensions of its David to melek-ship. Now we must consider what it presupposes in using the term nagid to express the counterposed ideal of
rulership expounded by its Yahweh. As I indicated already in the preliminary discussion to Chapter 7, the context for understanding the latter is an Israelite one. In fact, it is a context largely created within the
text of Samuel, and thus the subtitle to this chapter calls it 'an intratextual context', in distinction from the 'transtextual context' discussed in
the preceding chapter, and from an 'intertextual context' drawn upon
throughout my discussion.1 In this chapter our investigation of this
context will show how our stretch of text significantly develops and
resolves (to some degree!) a compact set of themes already established
in earlier sections of the narrative in Samuel. It will further prompt us,
in our final chapter, to consider briefly how these themes relate to the
whole of Samuel, and what their implications are, within the Hebrew
Bible, and beyond.
8.2. The Term TH nagid in the Hebrew Bible
8.2.1. General Survey
From the available evidence,2 nagid appears to have had currency in the
Hebrew language as a term to designate one who exercised leadership,
1. In detail, see above Ch. 7 n. 1.
2. On the term in general in the Hebrew Bible, see Richter (1965), Mettinger
(1976: ch. ix), Ishida (1977b), Halpern (1981: Ch. 1), Hasel (1986: cols. 203-19).
282
along with varying degrees of concomitant power, in any of a number

of different sociopolitical spheres. Thus, for example, the position in
the Jerusalem temple at the turn of the seventh to sixth century BCE of
an opponent of Jeremiah, the priest Pashhur, is denominated by means
of an apposition as ~n] TpS, 'administrator-leader, chief officer' in Jer.
20.1. The virulence of Jeremiah's attack reflects the power Pashhur was
able to wield against him. An analogous use of the term ndgtd to
designate the chief official of the temple during the monarchy occurs
twice in material special to Chronicles.3 Or again, though rather less
precise in its sociopolitical reference, Prov. 28.16 nonetheless defines a
nagid as a person in need of both intelligence and personal integrity, in
order to combat the evils of oppression and extortion or soliciting of
bribes, temptations to which the nagid is evidently open. Chronicles
also, with its frequent use of nagid for officials with political and/or
military powers under the kings, 4 is familiar with this usage. Then
further, in a striking delineation of his own auctoritas in his community
(Job 29.10), Job claims that the negidim, like the sarim (29.9), persons
normally given to speaking out and expecting others to listen, were
wont to defer to him in dumbstruck silence.
In all the preceding texts, while designating a figure of authority in
the community, nagid either patently does not refer, or evidently does
not exclusively refer, to a figure of royal standing.5 Thus as a lexical
item in Hebrew TJj in itself does not necessarily imply such standing.
However, as a matter of observation, the prima facie earliest uses of the
term in the Hebrew Bible, in Samuel-Kings, all apply to men who are
either on the way to getting, or already have, kingly authority.6 Moreover, apart from 2 Kgs 20.5 of Hezekiah, all other instances of the term
as applied to kings relate to kings of the early period of monarchic rule
3. One Azariah in the reign of Hezekiah, 2 Chron. 31.13; the other Jehiel in
the reign of Josiah, 2 Chron. 35.8.
4. 1 Chronicles 13.1; 27.16; 2 Chron. 11.11; 19.11; 28.7; cf. 2 Chron. 32.21 of
Assyrian officials.
5. Proverbs 28.16 could refer to a king, but the use of the term nagid here, as
probably also the use of the term moSel in 28.15, almost certainly is to generalize
the reference, in a way that similar proverbs using the term melek (cf., e.g., 29.4,
14) do not.
6. For 1 Sam. 9.16, 10.1 (Saul); 13.14, 25.30; 2 Sam. 5.2, 6.21, 7.8 (David),
see further below; in Kings see 1 Kgs 1.35 (Solomon), the sole text which appears
clearly to treat nagid as fully concomitant with melek, 8.16 LXX (David, cf. 2 Sam.
7.8); 14.7 (Jeroboam); 16.2 (Baasha); 2 Kgs 20.5 (Hezekiah).
283
in Israel, from Saul to Baasha. Indeed, unambiguous Hebrew Bible evidence for non-royal reference of the term largely clusters in texts
(Chronicles, Job, Proverbs, Daniel) whose period of (final) composition
is generally dated to the postmonarchic era. These observations at any
rate are consistent with a hypothesis that an originally royal term was
later democratized and widened in its reference.
In fact, a number of recent discussions have taken positions of this
kind, claiming that the term in Hebrew properly referred to the 'kingdesignate',7 or to the 'crown prince'8 or the like.9 On the other hand,
despite the complete absence of the term from texts dealing with premonarchic contexts, there have been those who have argued vigorously
for a pre-monarchic history of usage for nagid, as a term denoting in
origin a distinctive, pre-royal, office, that of a divinely-chosen military
leader,10 for the [putative] Israelite tribal confederacy.11 On this view its
application to Israelite kings is secondary, whether because this preroyal figure actually developed into monarchy at a particular historical
moment,12 or because the hereditary monarchy assumed or arrogated to
itself this erstwhile charismatic office.13
7. So, in a particular sense, referring to the 'charismatic' component in monarchy, Alt (1953a: II, 23-24; cf. 38, 61-62, 125 = 1966a: 195-96; cf. 210, 233, 24950): Yahweh designates Saul nagid (1 Sam. 9.16, 10.1), the people acclaim him
melek (1 Sam. 10.24); later this is applied fictively to David (2 Sam. 5.2), and then
usurped by David who himself designates Solomon (1 Kgs 1.35); but the original
idea is restored in the revolution of Jehu (2 Kgs 9.6, 12, though here without the
term nagid).
8. So, notably, Mettinger (1976: 158-62, 182-83), claiming 1 Kgs 1.35 as evidence of the original usage. Halpern (1981: 9-11) argues that a meaning of 'kingdesignate' in Alt's sense, original in anon-dynastic setting, was later routinized in a
dynastic setting as 'crown prince'.
9. Carlson (1964: 52-54) regards the term as a Deuteronomic alternative to
melek, drawn from an indeterminable earlier history of usage, with 'fewer overtones.. . in the royalist complex of ideas', to convey 'the Deuteronomic definition of
the national leader as the Deuteronomist felt he ought to be' (54).
10. So Richter (1965: 80-82), who expresses reserves both about applying the
term 'charismatic' to the nagid, and linking him with an Israelite amphictyony, as
Noth and Schmidt do.
11. So tentatively Noth (1959: 156 n. 2 = 1960: 169 n. 1), developed by
Schmidt (1970: Ch. 6, esp. 153-54, summary on 170).
12. So Schmidt (1970: 162-65).
13. So Richter (1965: 82, 83).
284
However, the problem that besets all historicizing accounts of the

significance of ndgid in the Hebrew Bible is that the ideological nature
of the texts is such, that evidence which ostensibly tells us about states
of affairs in the 'real world' is very often skewed in misleading ways,
and/or that we are easily tempted into reading their evidence about
these in ways that mislead us. Hence what I propose to undertake here
in relation to the ndgid texts in Samuel is an ideologically aware reading, which on the one hand seeks to avoid making unwarranted
assumptions about what the term actually meant in the Israel of any
given period, but on the other, is responsive to the actual dynamics of
its rhetoric within the text. Restricting further discussion here to the
ndgid texts in Samuel is justified because:
(1) 2 Sam 6.21 and 7.8 culminate a series of such texts in the story
of David in Samuel, in which the term is always, directly or indirectly, from the mouth of Yahweh; the next instance of it occurs
in the much later and contextually quite different application of
the term by David to Solomon in 1 Kgs 1.35.
(2) 1 Kgs 8.16 LXX (// 2 Chron. 6.5) is undoubtedly dependent on
2 Sam. 7.8, and 1 Kgs 14.7, 16.2, are very likely to have been
framed on the same model. In any case, these texts do not add
anything of substance to the ideological understanding generated
from the Samuel material.
(3) Ideologically the Samuel series is homogeneous, as my discussion will show, the earlier instances being fully consistent with
the indications of the meaning of the term in 2 Sam. 6.21 and 7.8,
which indications therefore the other texts in the series help to
supplement.
8.2.2. The Term T33 nagid in Samuel
That ndgid first makes its appearance in the story of Israel in the Hebrew Bible in the ideologically highly charged material narrating the
inauguration of kingship is reason enough to be cautious and inquiring
about its significance. Then the further observation that of 11 (LXX 12)
occurrences in Samuel-Kings, 7(8) are to be found in the Saul-David
material indicates a notable concentration within an ideologically
highly focused stretch of text. By contrast, occurrences of the term in
the rest of the Hebrew Bible are far more desultory, Chronicles
285
excepted, andhere including Chronicles14none is so rhetorically

charged with ideological meaning as those in Samuel.
8.2.2.1. 1 Samuel 9.16, 10.1
In fact, within the story of Israel in the Hebrew Bible, it is Yahweh who
is the first to employ the term ndgid, in a charge to the prophet Samuel
which significantly defines the divine conception of the role (1 Sam.
9.16-17). Searching for his father's lost asses, Saul, as yet unmet by
Samuel, and all unwitting of what is in store for him, is prompted by
his attendant to seek help from a seer who turns out to be Samuel (9.114). Already, however, Samuel had been apprised the previous night by
Yahweh (9.15) that on the morrow he is to 'anoint [Saul] as ndgid over
my people Israel' (btOfcT 'QU Û T3]b irTOQl 9.16act). Thus here a
ndgid is one chosen in advance by Yahweh, but on the ground is to be
singled out by a prophet acting as deferent of Yahweh's will to human
society. The one so designated will be set into a particular relation to
Israel as Yahweh's people, a relation that entails his rescuing (JJ'tDliTl)
'my people from the hands of the Philistines' (9.16ap). This clearly
gives the nagid here a role of military leadership, one in which his
prime responsibility is to Yahweh, whose people he is to lead. But that
more than this may be involved may be implicated when, confirming to
Samuel that the newly encountered Saul is his designated, Yahweh
summarizes Saul's function, again in relation to Yahweh's people, with
a verb not elsewhere applied to the task of a leader: 'this man will
reassemble, regroup,15 my people' ('DJQ liar nr 9.17b(3). While the
reference of this term could be limited to military command, the insistence of Yahweh (four times in 9.15-16) in defining the task of the
ndgid in relation to his people argues otherwise, since the term 'my
people' almost always comprehends the whole of Israel as a socio-religious entity. Thus it is likely that this term includes responsibilities for
a more general socio-religious organization of the people, not defined
more specifically here. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the term used is
14. Most of the 21 instances in Chronicles, of which only 2 or 3 parallel

Samuel-Kings (111.2 // 2 Sam. 5.2,1 17.7 // 2 Sam. 7.8; cf. II 6.5 with 1 Kgs 8.16),
are in lists of officials. To be sure, these lists have an ideological function within
Chronicles, but the term ndgid is quite incidental within this.
15. McCarter (1980: 179) plausibly argues that the appropriate sense for the
verb here is that instanced in the related nouns Tr&yKT&S, 'assembly'.
286
one which has no clear monarchic associations, at least so far as our

evidence indicates.
Further, in his words to Samuel, Yahweh seems deliberately to allude
to the call of Moses as narrated in Exodus 3: the prime responsibility of
Saul's nagid-ship is to rescue from the Philistines his hard-pressed
people whose plaint has reached Yahweh, just as Moses was called to
rescue them from Egypt in similar circumstances.16 But, for all that
Moses is never termed nagid, the implicatures of this paralleling of
their commissions goes deeper than this. For, expounded to Moses
throughout the long narrative of his call in Exodus 3-4,17 and constantly demonstrated in the many-scened confrontation with Pharaoh
that ensues,18 the sovereignty of Yahweh through his prophetic word is
central to this Exodus text. Thus Moses' was a style of leadership that
was determined by the word of Yahweh, and that never threatened to
usurp Yahweh's melek-ship. We shall see these same ideals of leadership being defined in Samuel for Yahweh's ndgid.
Much of what Yahweh thus revealed to Samuel he repeats to Saul at
the actual anointing on the morrow (1 Sam. 10.1 LXXB B).19 He adds,
however, the further definition 'Yahweh has anointed you over his
"heritable property" (nahalato) as leader' ("Vyfr in^m Û miT "[TOO
10. Ib). The term nahald in the Hebrew Bible normally denotes realia
such as land or livestock in their aspect as one's own property, that
over which one has legal right of possession, and of which one has
absolute right of disposal within the limits of customary law. Since
goods and chattels of this kind were commonly acquired and passed on
16. With Exod. 3.7a cf. 1 Sam. 9.16bct, where the LXX reading on e7ie|3AV|/a
em TTIV Tcmeivcoaiv TOV Xaoi) is even closer; and with Exod. 3.9a cf. 1 Sam.
9.16bp.
17. Thus, already Moses' first question (3.11) raises the problem of being
accepted as Yahweh's representative, and through his further objections the focus
on Yahweh's word becomes more and more explicit O^pn 1IOZT $b*\ 4.1; "[TPTim
"onn iBj 4.12; raa anmn PN rafen 4.15).

18. Thus the messenger formula 4.22; 5.1 and frequently; the specific commissioning as Yahweh's spokesman to Pharaoh 4.22; 6.11, etc.; Moses' reference to
his speaking to Pharaoh in Yahweh's name 5.23.
19. Its absence in MT is widely accepted as a case of unintentional scribal elision, resulting from the scribe's eye inadvertently returning to the second occurrence in his exemplar of ni!T "JTOQ after having copied the first, thus omitting the
second of its occurrences and everything in between. So Wellhausen (1871: 72-73)
and most since.
287
as an inheritance, the nuance 'heritage' is often prominent in naffld. As

a metaphor for the relationship of Israel to Yahweh the term occurs
nearly 30 times in the Hebrew Bible,20 almost always in close association with 'am, 'people'. The term expresses the idea of Israel as properly and exclusively belonging to Yahweh, whether to make salient the
grounds for his absolute claim to Israel's loyalty (as, e.g., Deut. 4.20;
Jer. 10.16), or the grounds for Israel's appeal to his saving intervention
(as, e.g., 1 Kgs 8.51, 53; Ps. 28.9). This is the only instance of its
occurrence in connection with the term ndgid. Here it makes particularly salient the notion that the ndgid is being entrusted with what
properly belongs to Yahweh, with what constitutes for Yahweh the
equivalent of that most onerous of trusts in the human sphere, heritable
property.
Three further observations about this passage are relevant here. First,
apart from the verb 'to anoint' (nCJQ), no other terminology indisputably21 associated with the ideology and practice of monarchy in the
Hebrew Bible is used in this present narrative context, which stretches
from 1 Sam. 9.1 to 10.16.22 Given that in the immediately surrounding
text, 1 Sam. 8 and 10.17-25, melek-ship is very much at issue, this
omission of melek terminology in Yahweh's definition of Saul's commission is thus at least potentially significant. How this potential is
developed we shall see further below.
Second, attention is drawn to the fact that Saul's institution to the
task of ndgid is through the mediation of a notable prophetic figure.
The earlier part of the narrative (9.6-14) foregrounds the prophetic
powers and authority of the seer of Ramah, eventually revealed to be
Samuel (9.18-19). Moreover, the less common and thus more striking
expression for mediation of divine verbal revelation 'to uncover the ear
20. Deut. 4.20; 9.26, 29; 32.9; 2 Sam. 20.19; 21.3; 1 Kgs 8.51, 53; 2 Kgs 21.14;
Isa. 19.25; 63.17; Jer. 10.16 = 51.19; Mic. 7.14, 18; Joel 2.17; 4.2; Ps. 28.9; 33.12;
68.10[9]; 78.62, 71; 79.1; 94.5, 14; 106.5, 40. In 1 Sam. 26.19; 2 Sam. 14.16; the
reference may rather be to the land as Yahweh's, as it clearly is, e.g., in Jer. 2.7.
21. Naturally I exclude ndgid here, since I am in the process of arguing that it is
used in Samuel as a term, not to designate a specifically royal function, but to
encapsulate a role ideologically opposed to that of melek.
22. The motif of the search for the lost donkeys 9.3-6 and 10.14-16 forms an
inclusio to this stretch of text on the one hand, and on the other, 10.17-19 clearly
introduces a scene not immediately related to the preceding, just as 9.1-2 had done
in relation to what preceded it.
288
of X' Qm n rf?: 9.15) forcefully introduces Yahweh's charge to

Samuel to anoint Saul nagid. This is further underlined by Yahweh's
'responding' Oi~l]i)), when Samuel sees Saul for the first time, with a
further confirmatory message (9.17).
Finally, there appears at the end of this narrative sequence a vignette
designed to convey to the reader the subservience of the nagid to prophetic mediation. The last, and thus most important, of the three signs
of his election trailed to Saul by Samuel is his meeting and becoming
involved with a band of prophets at Gibeah (10.5-6), by which means
'the Spirit of Yahweh will take sudden hold of you, you will prophesy
with them, and be transformed into a different person' (10.6). When
this duly happens (10.10-13), we are further informed that Saul's
strictly prophetic powers were shortlived: 'he ceased prophesying'
(10.13act). However, the subsequent narrative makes clear that his
being a different person, one empowered by the Spirit of Yahweh, a
result of his encounter with prophecy, endures: 'the Spirit of God took
sudden hold of Saul' (11.6aa; cf. 10.6aa, lOb). That the divine empowerment proper to Saul as nagid is mediated to him through the spirit of
prophecy,23 a spirit in which he shared, however, only temporarily, is a
clear narrative implicature fraught with significance to any reader familiar with the stories about the deliverer-judges known to us in Judges,
whose comparable divine empowerment for leadership there required
no prophetic mediation.24 Thus nagid-ship is being presented as in this
respect25 qualitatively different from the type of moSF'-ship depicted in
Judges, a new kind of leadership of the people of Yahweh appropriate
to a new age wherein prophetic mediation is to be in the ascendant.
Indeed, the subservience of Saul as nagid to Samuel as prophet is
strikingly expressed in a part of Samuel's words of commission which
we have not so far considered. Saul is enjoined, once he has been transformed into a new person by his prophetic experience, to act spontaneously, doing whatever he saw fit, in the certainty that God would
be with him (10.7). Yet in the very next breath Saul is given strict
23. This point, so important in this text, is not carried over into the clearly
derivative account of David's anointing by Samuel, where his enduement by the
Spirit of Yahweh is connected immediately with the act of anointing, 1 Sam. 16.13.
24. Compare Judg. 3.10; 6.34; 11.29; 14.6, 19; 15.14. Note again that the term
nagid is not used in any of these narratives.
25. In other respects the role assigned to Saul closely resembles that of these
earlier leaders; cf. 1 Sam. 9.16b with Judg. 6.14, and the depiction of Saul's clash
with the Ammonites in 1 Sam. 11.1-11.
289
instructions to wait seven days for Samuel's arrival in Gilgal, when he

will 'reveal to (Saul) what he is to do' (n&rn "I0K HK ~p Tlimm 10.8).
A clear prophetic check on the ostensible charismatic freedom of the
nagidl26 This second injunction further serves as a plot link in the exposition of ndgid-ship in the story of Israel under Saul and David, in that
it signposts the next occasion that the concept is invoked. To this next
occasion we now turn.
8.2.2.2. 1 Samuel 13.14
Having duly waited, in rather desperate circumstances (13.7, 8b), the
seven days set for Samuel's arrival and waited in vain (13.8a), Saul acts
as he sees fit (pDNHNl ?'I assumed the strength (to act)' = 'I made the
decision (to act)' 13.12b;27 cf. 10.7), in order to stem the flight of
demoralised troops (13.1 Ibex), by himself offering sacrifices to gain the
favour of Yahweh (13.12ap). Samuel, inevitably arriving immediately
the deed has been done (13.10a), accuses Saul of moral turpitude
(ffoO], 'you have acted wrongheadedly' 13.13a) in the flagrant violation of a command of Yahweh (13.13b). The divine command in question is evidently Samuel's earlier instruction to Saul to wait for him to
come and offer the sacrifices (10.8), even though that had not been
specifically marked as a word from Yahweh. Clearly, the prophetic
word is being given the status of a divine command not to be violated
in any circumstances whatever. The consequences for Saul are condign:
having at the outset of his governorship over Israel failed this test of his
responsiveness, Yahweh tells Saul that his kingship ("[ro'PQQ) which
would have been supported in perpetuity by Yahweh, will not now
endure (13.13bp, 14a). More, already Yahweh has sought out 'someone
who is in accord with his intentions' (DD^D ETK), and appointed him
(imin)28 as nagid over his people (13.14ba).
26. Note how similar is the rhetorical device here to that in 2 Sam. 7.3-5, where
the prophet first affirms David's freedom of action ('do whatever you have in
mind'; n&i) ~[^ "pD^D ~W$ ^D) because 'Yahweh is with you', only for this to be
immediately denied by Yahweh! This device lends the denial greater impact.
27. The standard rendering 'I forced myself seems, in the context of Saul's
words and general behaviour in 13.7-14, both too defensive and too concessive to
the implied disapproval in Samuel's 'what have you done?' (fP&U ilQ 13.1 la). Note
further that, unlike 'I have done wrong' (TlNOn 15.24a), Saul does not here respond
to Samuel's ringing condemnation in 13.13-14. The few other instances of the verb
in the Hebrew Bible do not offer much help in the present context.
28. In accord with normal syntax, the wayyiqtol verb form should be taken as a
290
Here, differently from 9.16 and 10.1 above, the royal term mamldkd,
'kingship', occurs in a context with nagid, where it is evident that, in
practical terms, both refer to one and the same state of affairs in the
world, that is, to what I have, in the foregoing paragraph, more neutrally termed 'governorship over Israel'. Nor is it immediately evident
in the rhetoric of this text that the terms are being used as notional
opposites. This is because this text is primarily aimed at making a different, though related, point. The essential contrast to be made here is
between two individual 'governors' of Israel, if I may persist for the
moment in my neutral terminology, one culpably disobedient to the will
of Yahweh as mediated through the prophet, the other affirmed to be in
tune with Yahweh's will. But is it of no significance that, in parallel
with this principal contrast, the term mamlakd is associated with the
rejected 'governor', whereas nagid is linked with the approved successor? Admittedly, the text allows notionally that Yahweh might have
supported Saul's kingship in perpetuity, but the stating of this unreal
consequence serves only to underline the heinousness of Saul's offence.
Thus when the text, back in positive mode, goes on to affirm how
Yahweh has actually responded to this crisis of 'governorship' of
Israel, it does so with the term nagid. Moreover, whereas the text uses
the second person possessive, with anaphora to Saul, of mamlakd, 'your
kingship/kingdom',29 the nagid expression here, as always in the texts
we are considering, makes clear that the sphere of governorship is in
fact Yahweh's people. Hence there are grounds enough for concluding
that this text, though not foregrounding a contrast between melek-ship
preterite. However, its particular implicature in the context depends upon the
rhetoric of Samuel's speech to Saul, which is not intended to give a precise historical account of events already accomplished in the real world, but to convey to Saul
how Yahweh has already determined those events: as far as Saul need be concerned
David's appointment is as good as accomplished. Thus, understood within its given
rhetorical context, the preterite imin here is not in tension with the weqdtal form in
1 Sam. 25.30 and the yiqtol form in 2 Sam. 5.2, nor does it require those forms to
be construed as other than futures.
29. Hebrew HD^QD comprehends both the more abstract idea of 'kingly power'
and the more concrete one of the sphere and object of that power, a 'kingdom'
consisting of people and territory. Though I judge that the former is the more
prominent idea in the present context, it should be kept in mind that in Hebrew the
latter is not thereby completely suppressed.
291
and nagid-ship, still has that ideological contrast as a strong implicature

of its rhetoric.30
8.2.2.3. 1 Samuel 25.30
If 1 Sam. 13.14 is an early, tantalizingly anonymous,31 foreshadowing
of David as ndgid, we have to wait a considerable time for the first
explicit reference to him in this role. When it comes, however, it is
freighted with a significance imparted to it by this delay, or more accurately by what has preceded its appearance. David, at first welcomed to
the court of Saul (1 Sam. 18.2-5), and later married to his daughter
Michal (18.27), is soon perceived by Saul as a potential rival (18.9),
both to himself (18.29, etc.), and to the eventual succession of his son
Jonathan (20.31). Forced to flee for safety (19.12, etc.), he becomes a
freebooter in command of a band of the disaffected and disadvantaged
(22.1-2), roaming his home territory in the southern Judaean hills,
retreating to hideouts in the surrounding wilderness (23.13-14). Saul
mounts a military-style campaign against him, using forces he elsewhere deploys against the Philistines (24.2-3[l-2]). One of the necessities of everyday life however conspires to leave Saul all unwitting at
the mercy of David and his men (24.4-8[3-7]). Though David piously
and rather pompously spurns the opportunity to dispatch 'the Lord's
anointed', he is not similarly constrained from letting Saul know about
his admirable restraint (24.9-16[8-15]). This demonstration by David of
supererogatory magnanimity towards his enemy evokes from Saul an
30. Of the texts under consideration here, this is the one with which the
'designated king/crown prince' explanation of nagid encounters least difficulty,
since it makes internally consistent sense of what 13.14 says, and is compatible
with the fact that Saul's reign endures for a considerable period beyond this point in
the story of Saul and David. But it is difficult to envisage, on this theory, why 9.16
and 10.1 should wish to cast Saul merely in this ex hypothesi transitional role, given
that there was no prior incumbent to impede the desired elevation of Saul to kingship, and that in 10.20-24 this elevation in any case takes place immediately. Moreover, we shall see below that it is equally hard to account, on this understanding,
for Abigail's (25.30 still future) and the elders' (2 Sam. 5.2 future at the time of
Yahweh's word) references to this role for David, and virtually impossible to
account for David's (6.21), or Yahweh's (7.8).
31. Given that the unnamed prophet in 1 Kgs 13.2 can name Josiah to Jeroboam
centuries before the king's appearance, the reason for Samuel's reticence here (as
also that of another unnamed prophet about the identity of the promised 'faithful
priest' in 1 Sam. 2.35) is a little puzzling: it may simply reflect a different view on
narrative suspense.
292
effusive confession of wrongdoing, an explicit acceptance of the reality

of David's accession to kingship over Israel, and a plea for the sparing
of Saul's lineage (24.17-22[16-21J).
But the awed respect shown by David to his enemy Saul, 'the Lord's
anointed', is not extended to others who cross him. Seeking to support
himself and his band through the 'offer' of protection to local pastoralists (25.5-8), David is roused to murderous anger by the cynically dismissive refusal of one Nabal to avail himself of this service (25.9-13).
David is however deflected from his bloody intent by the breathless but
timely interposition of Nabal's wife, Abigail (25.13-22). Her approach
to David is cleverly calculated, first to placate his anger by according
him all 'due' deference (25.23-24), and then to persuade him, on two
separate grounds, to a view of his situation which rules out violence
against her husband. Her first ploy is to denigrate her husband as not
worth David's attention (25.25), and certainly not worth the risk of
bloodguilt (25.26). Moreover, as she now presents to David and his
men as a berakd-gift32 the foodstuffs originally coveted by David as
payment for the alleged protection (25.27), the substantive cause of
anger against her husband is removed.
Second, and with a deferential acknowledgment of great presumption
in doing so (25.28a), Abigail reminds David of his divinely ordained
high destiny (25.28b, 30), claiming that while David's life will be
providentially preserved, the lives of his enemies will not (25.29), and
urging him not to incur bloodguilt so as not to create a snare and
stumbling-block to fulfilment of his destined course (25.31). With voluble gratitude David accepts as providential Abigail's intervention
(25.32-35), with eager alacrity he receives the gifts she has brought
(35a), and with assurances of his favour he sends her home again (35b).
For our ideological study of the term nagid we must examine Abigail's concluding words (25.28-31) in some detail. Abigail prefaces the
second stage of her case by repeating in heightened form ('forgive your
servant's presumption'; "jriDK Mizb M NfcJ 28a cf. 24a{3) the conventional expression of deprecation uttered when approaching a superior.
This contextualizes what follows as inferably pushing up against or
transgressing (U^S'p 28a) the conventional limits of what it is proper
for someone in the position here being adopted by Abigail to say to
32. The berdkd is a gift of greeting, offered to superiors, i.e. those who command a power that might threaten, especially those thought in need of propitiation,
which manifests a disposition of goodwill and blessing on the part of the offerer.
293
someone in the position here being assigned to David. Within the horizon of the narrative plot this panders to David's ego and smooths the
way to his acceptance of what Abigail is about to say.
But at the same time, within the horizon of the text's ideology, it prepares the way for Abigail's informally prophetic33 delineation of
David's exalted future destiny as compelling grounds for the particular
present behaviour, or rather restraint, she urges upon him. Two separate
but related grounds are cited, both introduced by "O in its idiomatically
elliptical usage: 'you see, the point is that (on the one hand) Yahweh
will undoubtedly make my lord an established house, (and on the other)
it is Yahweh's battles that my lord is fighting, and (thus on both counts)
no wrongdoing must be there to be found against you from your (prior)
career' (28b). Accordinglyas Abigail infers from both points but with
a particular eye to the secondDavid need have no concern either for
his own safety or about the demise of his enemies, since these matters
Yahweh has made his own concern (29). Rather, she argues, now
shifting the main focus to the first point, David should be concerned
about how things will stand when Yahweh fulfils David's destiny (3031).
The future destiny which Yahweh will fulfil for David is further
defined by Abigail in v. 30 as 'when Yahweh will accomplish for my
lord the good concerning you completely as he promised, namely,
when he appoints you nagid over Israel'34 The future orientation of
what she is saying here is very material (note how i"P!Tl 'then it will be
that' 30aa foregrounds this future reference), since Abigail's argument
is that what David threatens to do now will have serious repercussions
for his role then. Moreover, rhetorically the force of Abigail's argument
depends upon her citing the most relevant, substantive, and operative
future role for David: it would be a bizarre piece of bathos for her
merely to cite a lesser and transient role.
33. For an explanation of this characterization of the second segment of Abigail's speech, see below 8.3, p. 300.
34. I take the clause btntzr biJ "H]1? ~p!!l to be concomitant with and epexegetic of the the preceding "j^ rmon nK...miT nfOIT "O: i.e. David's appointment as
nagid is the particular future event which will consummate the good Yahweh has
promised to perform for David. I completely fail to see how Halpern's comment
(1981: 5) on the unusual double syntax of "Ql can lead to the conclusion that "JI^T
is in coordination with the latter verb rather than with nfoJT, since this construction
of ~p^l can in no way change the apposition of miCDn HK with "KZJN ^DD.
294
According to Abigail it is nagid-ship which constitutes the substantive and operative role for which David has been destined by Yahweh,
and which fulfils the good Yahweh has promised him. Now since 'the
good' referred to here is patently a relevant promised good already
mentioned in the context, referential definition for 'when Yahweh will
accomplish for my lord the good concerning you completely as he
promised' (J^ miun n "Dl "I0K to Tltf? niiT nfoJT 'D 30a) is
given by 'for Yahweh will assuredly make for my lord an established
house' CpNJ JT3 Tltib mrr nfiJJT nfol? 'D 28ap). Thus the text here
associates the future fulfilment of the promise of a perduring dynasty
a notably royal ambition as we have demonstrated in the preceding
chapter (7.2.3.4)with David's still future installation into nagidship. This accords with 2 Sam. 7.8-16, where the promise to David of a
perduring dynasty (7.lib, 16), in a form of words which 1 Sam.
25.28ba very closely resembles,35 arises directly out of Yahweh's
exposition of nagid-ship to David (7.8-11).
By now it is quite evident that in Abigail's speech nagid is replete
with ideological gravamen. For, more than anything else she says to
David, it is the prospect of this role being devolved upon him by Yahweh that is the most effective deterrent to inappropriate action now.
Thus not only can nagid here not be a mere transitional role to becoming melek, but, as the role which embodies Yahweh's will for human
leadership of his people, it is further implicitly being set against the
latter. Hence the fact that, in this ideologically freighted context which
patently accords the divine imprimatur to the role of nagid, Abigail
fails even to mention David's becoming melek, is a polemically
weighted omission. Even more so, given the close context set by the
immediately preceding chapter. There an exchange between Saul and
David (24.10-22[9-21J) culminates in Saul's emphatically worded
acknowledgment that David will become king: 'so the upshot is I now
know that you will certainly become king and the kingdom of Israel
will pass into your hands' (fTn HQpl f'pQn "f^Q "O WT run HH^l
^JOCT HD'PQD 24.21[20]). Thus Abigail's eschewing any mention of a
35. It is not necessary for my ideologically oriented discussion here to attempt
to determine whether the one text depends upon the other. To me 1 Sam. 25.28bai
looks like a condensed allusion to 2 Sam. 7.1 lb,16a (Schmidt 1970: 121-22 asserts
that the former is based upon 2 Sam. 7.16), but we do not have sufficient evidence
to know whether the parallel expressions were in fact also to be found in other
contexts.
295
future role for David as melek, and defining it solely as nagid-ship,

takes on even more point.
8.2.2.4. 2 Samuel 5.2
From the foregoing timely recall of David to the demands of his
divinely appointed future destiny, we move forward considerably in the
story of David, to the appeal to this same destiny made by the Israelites
in installing David as their king in place of Ishbosheth (Eshbaal). Following the death of Saul and Jonathan in the battle of Gilboa (1 Sam.
31; 2 Sam. 1), David moved to Hebron and was there made king of the
Judaean group in the South (2 Sam. 2.1-4). Abner had installed Saul's
son Ishbosheth in Mahanaim as king over 'Israel',36 but very soon
Abner began intriguing with David to bring Israel over to him (3.6-21).
Although Abner's murder by Joab (3.22-39) cut short these negotiations, the subsequent assassination of Ishbosheth (2 Sam. 4) left the
Northern group with no viable alternative candidate.37
The grounds cited by the Israelites in their suit to David (5.1-2) are
an interesting mixture of the practical and the ideological. They first
claim near kinship38 to David as a basis of approach (5.1b). Next they
recollect David's (otiose nntf for emphatic contrast) earlier outstanding
military leadership of the forces of Israel even when Saul was king, as
proof of David's manifesting an essential qualification (5.2a). With this
they conjoin (wayyiqtol verb) citation of a purported undertaking from
Yahweh to David, to the effect that David (again otiose nntf twice)
would shepherd Yahweh's people, Israel, and would become nagid
over Israel (5.2b). How this word of Yahweh to David is known to
them is not stated, nor is it made clear when they believe David to have
received it. A natural way to construe "J^ miT HEN"1! is 'and then Yahweh said to you' or 'so Yahweh said to you', thus making Yahweh's
statement to David both subsequent to and consequent upon David's
36. It is not clear whether H^D bfcOET ^D, 'over Israel in its entirety', makes a
claim to de jure authority over the Judaean group, but it is evident in the text of
2 Sam. 2-4 that de facto control was confined to (? parts of) the Northern group.
37. Jonathan's son Mephibosheth (Meribbaal) was both too young and too
incapacitated, as 4.4 has already informed us.
38. Four of the five other instances in the Hebrew Bible of the combination xDî> and x-lfen (where 'x' stands for a personal suffix), Gen. 2.23; 29.14; Judg. 9.2,
2 Sam. 19.14[13], all appeal to close genetic relationships. In the fifth, 2 Sam.
19.13[12], David appeals to his closer kinship with the Judaean group than the
Israelite group, a notable irony in relation to 2 Sam. 5.1b!
296
proving his qualities as military leader. It is quite possible, however,

that 2b is more loosely linked to 2a, simply offering a third ground for
their approach to David, without intending any particular syntacticological connection with the second-cited ground. But what remains
common to either construction is a claim that sometime in the past,
most probably during the lifetime of Saul, Yahweh promised David:
'you will shepherd my people, Israel, and you will become ndgid over
Israel'.
Though it is surprising to the reader to recall that our story of David
in Samuel has not directly recorded the giving of such a word by Yahweh to David,39 that point itself is not germane here. Far more material
to our purpose is to observe that (1) what Yahweh is said to have
promised to David was ndgid-ship; (2) this function was to be entered
upon at a date still future to the time of Yahweh's (alleged) statement;
(3) that shepherding Yahweh's people, Israel, is an activity concomitant
with, and thus a duty of, being ndgid. Several points significant for our
inquiry follow from these observations:
(1) Given that it is David's future role that is at issue in the cited
divine word, ndgid-ship has to be a significant future function for
David in its own right. Yet if ndgid-ship were, as has been
claimed, merely the status of being 'king-in-waiting' or 'crown
prince', in transition to that of melek-ship, then what Yahweh
would have to have promised David is the ex hypothesi ultimately destined status of melek.
(2) In the context of the Israelites' citation of it, the promise must
measure up to the rhetorical needs of their suit to David. But
since David is already king of Judah, and, even more relevant,
since they are seeking to persuade him to accept kingship over
Israel, it would be a curiously lame rhetoric to cite, as the cap to
their suit, a promise of no stronger intent than that David was to
become ' "king-in-waiting" over Israel'.
(3) But, in any case, the first part of the utterance attributed to Yahweh clearly manifests a view of ndgid-ship as discharging functions that go beyond that of military leader, and which are
39. Something like it, however, is already an implicature of Abigail's reminding
David of Yahweh's intentions for him. The most logical place to have expected
such a disclosure in the story of David in Samuel, given 1 Sam. 13.14, is through
Samuel at David's election and anointing: cf. 1 Sam. 16.13 with 10.1, 6, 10, on the
one hand, and 2 Sam. 6.21, on the other.
297
elsewhere attributed to melek-ship, that is, the leading, guiding,

protecting, and providing for the people that is comprehended
within the metaphor of shepherd of the people.40 It is this set of
functions in relation to themselves which the Israelites now look
to David to discharge, and what makes their citation of this word
of Yahweh so pertinent.
The evidence of 2 Sam. 5.2 is clear, just as it was in 1 Sam. 13.14 and
25.30 of David, and in 9.16 and 10.1 of Saul: when he is solemnly pronouncing about the governorship of his people that he is entrusting to
his chosen, Yahweh quite deliberately speaks of ndgid-ship and not of
melek-ship. Moreover, far from treating the former as a purely nominal
or transient role, Yahweh predicates of ndgid-ship the material functions of melek-ship. Indeed, when 5.3 immediately goes on to narrate
that the elders of Israel, having made a compact with David, install him
as their melek, we see that in practical terms the two roles are being
equated in the context. But this practical equation by the elders tends
the more to highlight Yahweh's manifest partiality for the term nagid in
defining the role of his chosen governor for his people. In other words,
the rhetoric of the text continues to mark nagid with Yahweh's seal, as
the term expressing Yahweh's ideology of leadership, while branding
melek with the stigma of betraying an all too human view of it.
8.2.2.5. 2 Samuel 6.21 and 7.8
Since we have discussed in detail both of these texts in their contexts in
earlier chapters (4.2.3 and 5.2.1.3 respectively) it is only necessary
for us here to focus on their particular contribution to the ideology of
ndgid-ship within the texts under consideration. First, we note again
that David's words in 6.21 are his retort to Michal's taunt that his cultic
antics have demeaned the status of melek yisrd'el, 'king of Israel'
(6.20bfty). Thus, to be an unanswerable put-down of Michal's regal disdain for his conduct, patently David's response must appeal to a status
intended to transcend that of melek yisrd'el. It would be utterly ludicrous for David to throw back at Michal a minor role long since superseded: 'Yahweh chose me over your father and all his house to appoint
meking-in-waiting!' Hence both the contextual and the ideological
rhetoric demand that nagid be intended to invest David with a different
40. On shepherdship in Mesopotamian kingship, see above 7.2.3.2-3, and in
Israelite see, e.g., Ezek. 34; apropos of Yahweh's kingship, Exod. 15.1-18 paradigmatically combines the military and the civil-religious.
298
and 'higher' status to that envisaged within Michal's royalist purview.

The nagid acts in the court of Yahweh (mrp ^S1? 'in the presence of
Yahweh' as emphasizing inclusio 6.21) to serve Yahweh's people with
all necessary humility, albeit that that is humiliation in Michal's
aristocratic eyes (6.22). The extent of the intended ideological contradiction between nagid-ship and melek-ship is most palpable here in the
explicit contraposing of Michal's 'king of Israel' ('pfcOfcr ~f^Q) to
David's 'leader over Yahweh's people, over Israel' (">$ miT DJtf *?# T23
^Nl&r): Israel is Yahweh's people, not the king's subjects.
Hence when in 7.8 Yahweh, echoing Abigail as it were, reminds
David of his divinely ordered career, it is to nagid-ship and all that this
implies for his ordained goal (7.9-10), that Yahweh forcibly recalls
David from the misdirections into which his covert royal pretensions
had seduced him. Again the rhetoric of Yahweh's speech would misfire
ruinously unless for him nagid encapsulates the highest level of leadership to which he intended to call his 'subject', David. As we have seen
in the previous chapter, virtually every good thing that Yahweh confers
on David (7.9) can be paralleled in the conventional claims of ancient
Near Eastern monarchs. But it is on David as nagid that Yahweh confers them, not on David as melek. Yahweh eschews the latter term altogether, and only later applies the related terms mamlakd, 'kingship',
and kisse, 'royal throne', to David's descendants. Only here
(7.12b[13b], 16) does Yahweh's extended ideological statement of the
nature of the Davidic dynastic governorship of his people Israel as
nagid-ship obliquely accommodate something of its de facto monarchic
style. Nor does David's subsequent prayer, though closely revolving
around the promise in lib-16, ever pick up on either of the royalist
terms used by Yahweh, let alone take up the term melek. Granted,
David's prayer does not use the term nagid either, but, given that his
prayer focuses on the excitingly new in Yahweh's words, that is, the
promise of a dynasty in perpetuity, this is hardly surprising. The more
telling, then, is David's remarkable failure, given his pretensions hitherto, to seize in any way on Yahweh's oblique concession of monarchic
status to his descendants.
8.3. Synthesis
All in all, there is a notable consistency of ideological outlook running
through all of the passages we have considered here. All are texts
which purport to report, in crucial circumstances, views, statements,
299
and decisions of Yahweh concerning the human governance of his

people Israel. In each passage Yahweh is made to use the term nagid to
encapsulate his notions of such leadership, and explicitly or implicitly
to counterpose this set of notions over against another set of notions
associated with the term melek. Not that the two sets, as regards action
on the ground as it were, are mutually exclusive: on the contrary, the
nagid quite evidently is to discharge all relevant governing functions
elsewhere associated with melek. But in that case, is there after all no
substantial difference between the terms?
The essential difference lies in the ideological view each projects of
the relation between Yahweh, Israel, and Israel's governor. In our texts
the melek is one who sees his power from Yahweh as susceptible to his
own arbitrary manipulation, who obtrudes himself inappropriately and
disproportionately between Yahweh and Israel, and who treats Israel as
little more than the subjects of his monarchic power. The nagid, on the
other hand, is positively portrayed as one who sees his power as a
sovereign and inviolable devolvement from Yahweh, who acts strictly
under the orders of Yahweh for the benefit of Yahweh's people, and
holds himself as no more than the willing subject of the divine
monarch. These opposed projections are delineated at their sharpest in
the stretch of text we have made our special study. But it is now evident
from our foregoing discussion that the earlier nagid texts in Samuel
help to bring these projections increasingly into focus.
In particular, these texts share, though with varying degrees of
directness, an emphasis on prophetic mediation between Yahweh and
the nagid. This is most obvious at the beginning and end of the
sequence of texts, in the relations of Samuel to Saul and Nathan to
David respectively. We have observed above how Saul's nagid-ship is
not only deferred to him through the medium of prophecy, but is also to
be continuously directed by it (1 Sam. 9.15-10.9; 13.10-14).41 The
prophetic mediacy of Nathan is yet more clearly emphasized. For one
thing, through it the text foregrounds, and decisively ends, the growing
41. Both 1 Kgs 14.7-11, Ahijah to Jeroboam, and 16.2-4, Jehu ben Hanani to
Baasha, evince a similar outlook. In neither instance does Yahweh explicitly state
that his appointing each figure nagid over his people Israel OQD *">$ T3] "pDKl
b^liO1' 14.7b, 16.2a) was by means of prophetic mediation, though this is a notunreasonable implicature to draw. But each prophetic accusation is a clear instance
of presumptive prophetic direction, even as a final pronouncement of their respective fates.
300
estrangement of David from Yahweh, caused by David's unwillingness

to consult him. And for another, the sovereign initiative of Yahweh in
mediation is heavily stressed, both by the text's repeatedly highlighting
the act of prophetic mediation itself (7.4,8aa,17), and in Yahweh's
glaring repudiation (7.5-7) of Nathan's unmediated initial assurance to
David (7.3). Moreover, this divine word, through which Yahweh defers
to David the full, unsuspected, future scope and purpose of his nagidship (2 Sam. 7.8-16), becomes a standing topos in David's prayer
(7.18-29).
Furthermore, it is notable that both Abigail ('according to all he
spoke.. .concerning you', 7^.. .131 "KBR ^DD 1 Sam. 25.30a) and the
elders of Israel ('Yahweh said to you', ~p mm "intn 2 Sam. 5.2b) each
cite a word of Yahweh to David in connection with his appointment as
nagid. The most natural discourse implicature, notwithstanding the fact
that our text nowhere directly informs us about such a word, is that
each is referring to a prophetic word which is sufficiently public as to
be known to them as well as to David. Clearly, that the nagid is designated by a divine word is a standing assumption of this set of texts.42
But more, the whole of the second part of Abigail's speech to David
(1 Sam. 25.28-31) itself defines further for David the implications of
nagid-ship, in a sense prophetically, and thus foreshadows Yahweh's
speech mediated through Nathan. Lacking regular prophetic authorization, Abigail is careful to deprecate her words (25.28a), but in recognizing that she was in fact sent by Yahweh ('who sent you.. .to meet me',
TI&ripl?...'[lf7B? "IffiiN 25.32b) David accords them quasi-prophetic
status.43
42. Thus when neither 1 Sam. 13.14, nor 2 Sam. 6.21, nor 7.8 explicitly alludes
to such prophetic mediation, this is simply because it is not a point of direct relevance in the context of each. But it is not therefore to be supposed that it is
specifically excluded, as Schmidt supposes for 2 Sam. 7.8 (1970: 123, 149, 223). In
fact, Schmidt's whole view of 7.8-10, namely that, in contrast to 1 Sam. 25.30 and
2 Sam. 5.2, it expounds a view of Yahweh's will for David as manifest in and
through his successful career, with no idea of a prior and defining divine word, can
only have been elaborated in bizarre isolation from its context in 2 Sam. 7, especially 7.5-7, where Yahweh has just demonstrated by means of a negative example
the total supremacy of his prior divine word. See my discussion of 7.5-7 above,
5.2.1.2.
43. Compare, e.g., 1 Kgs 21.18a; Isa. 7.3a. But in these texts Elijah and Isaiah
respectively receive the regular specific prophetic commission, which includes
being furnished by Yahweh with the verbal substance of their message.
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In sum, then, there are two particular features of the notion of nagidship in this set of texts which I take to be fundamental, and which are
accordingly basic to the ideological rhetoric of our stretch of text,
especially in its concluding section, 2 Samuel 7. The first is that, first
and foremost, the nagtd is a role instituted by Yahweh for the welfare
of his people. As such, the nagtd is no more than a. primus inter pares,
who has no right to treat Israel as his own subjects, and whose every
action must serve to secure and increase the well-being of Yahweh's
people. The second is that, in order to achieve this divine purpose, the
nagtd is not only to be designated by the divine word, but at all times to
be directed by it. Thus a strong implicature of this view is that the
prophet is supreme deferent of the divine will to Yahweh's people. A
weaker implicature is that dynastic succession is not a logical concomitant of ndgid-ship. The next and final chapter will explore some of the
wider ramifications of this ideological stance.
Chapter 9
YAHWEH AND ISRAEL: DEFERENCE OF DIFFERENCE
9.1. Orientation: What Is the Difference? How Is It to Be Deferred?
At the heart of the Hebrew Bible, at the heart of all theistic theology,
lies a logical paradox. In a nutshell it is this: on the one hand, deity is
perceived to be wholly different from humanity; on the other, deity is
understood to relate to humanity. From this fundamental paradox flow
many others: finitude and infinitude, presence and absence, immanence
and transcendence, contingency and sovereignty, and so on. A Platonic
logic premised on the excluded middle must account these as logical
contradictions: nothing can simultaneously be both present and absent,
immanent and transcendent, subject to contingency and yet fully
sovereign. Nor, between entities that are wholly different from one
another, can any relationship be established. The Hebrew Bible, however, while availing itself of these and other polarities in its representations of God and humanity,1 is driven by a more experiential, less
ratiocinative, logic, which knows ways of mediating between entities
and notions a strict Platonic logic defines as mutually exclusive.
But if an idealist approach pursuing an unrelentingly systematic
rationality fails to relate satisfyingly with the world of experience, a
pragmatic approach focused only on abduction from experience may
fail to give a satisfyingly complete and rational account of the world.
Yet a basic human means of rationalizing experience is to define it by
sets of fundamental binary oppositions: deity-humanity, good-evil,
happy-wretched, and so on. But the rational logic of binary terms, with
its almost irresistible pull to exclude any messy middle ground between
1. Two pragmatico-theological traditions in the Hebrew Bible which notably
operate with polarizations (binary oppositions) are the priestly (holy-unholy,
clean-unclean, presence-absence, etc.), and the wisdom, especially as represented
in Proverbs (wise-foolish, diligent-lazy, rich-poor, etc.). Each specializes in ways
of mediating between the respective sets of opposites.
9. Yahweh and Israel: Deference of Difference
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them, comes into conflict with the undeniable pragmatics of experience,

which forces us to compromise between the apparent absolutes of our
binary terms. Moreover, human experience is quintessentially pragmatic, fluctuating according to time, feeling, circumstances: that is, it
is very context-bound, context-defined. Thus how we compromise
between the polarities provided by our binary sets in rendering account
of our experiences will vary notably from person to person, time to
time, circumstance to circumstance.
The Hebrew Bible is for the most part concerned to maintain the
difference of God from humanity and at the same time his relationship
with humanity, the absence of God from all that is unholy in the world,
and yet his presence in the world in redemption and sanctification of it.
This God is immanent in the world, but remains transcendent of it, a
sovereign lord of the universe, yet many of whose actions are contingent on human actions or responses. But such generalizations as these
about the Hebrew Bible mask the fact that how these polarities are
resolved varies considerably from text to text, for the reasons I indicated in the previous paragraph. Not only will a text in the priestly tradition tend to differ characteristically from another in the prophetic or
in the wisdom traditions, but even within these broad categories texts
will differ over whether they emphasize sovereignty at the expense of
contingency, presence over absence, difference over relationship. But
in the Hebrew Bible underlying all of these issues in understanding the
nature of God and his relationship to humanity, and underlying all
approaches to resolving them is the central question of how the will and
purpose of this God is mediated to humanity.
What have these broad philosophical-theological reflections to do
with our stretch of text dealing with a sequence in the story of David?
Quite simply this, that through narrative of a crucial set of events in the
story of David it presents a signal instance of conflict between some of
the fundamental polarities in human experience of God, and seeks to
persuade the reader to embrace a particular way of resolving them.
These polarities are at their clearest in 2 Samuel 7, where narrative of
incident in the world2 recedes behind theological representation of and
religious response to the world of incident. But my preceding chapters
should by now have abundantly demonstrated how the earlier sections
2. This phrase does not necessarily imply a claim on my part that any of the
events narrated actually happened, but only that they are such as the envisaged
reader could accept as having happened.
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of our stretch of text lead up to this highly verbal reflection in 2 Samuel

7. In our text David is engaged in establishing and developing his
melek-ship over Israel. The general problem of how this monarchy
relates to Yahweh and to his people opens out into issues concerning
Yahweh's sovereignty, his presence, and the means of mediating his
will and purpose. Part and parcel of these general issues are particular
questions concerning the ark and its housing as locus of God's presence, of the ark as a captive, mute, and royally manipulable deferent of
the divine power for blessing, as against the unbiddable word of Yahweh, ranging at will among all his people, addressing all and commanding the obedience of all.
9.2. Polarities of Governance: Between melek and nagid
In the preceding two chapters (7 and 8) I have attempted to sketch in
background to the principal set of binary terms that our stretch of text
uses to present and resolve the problem of monarchy in Israel. What
kind of human governance can be a deferent of the divine will and
power to his people, without infringing the divine sovereignty and
effacing the vital difference between god and human governor? My
Chapter 7 gave some account of the kind of exalted ancient Near Eastem monarchy that our text, under the term melek, represents David as
seeking to establish in Israel, a monarchy that professes deference to
the divine prerogative, while arrogating to itself effective control over
the means of its expression. Chapter 8 showed how within Samuel,
beginning in the story of Saul and carrying on through its account of
the rise of David, under the term nagid, the text promotes a role of
'leader of Yahweh's people', & primus inter pares distinctinctly subservient to Yahweh. This nagid is charged with the civil and military
governance of the people, but is to be both instituted and guided by the
authoritative deferent of Yahweh's will for his people, the prophetic
mediator of the divine word. As such, dynastic succession, so central to
melek-ship, is not a feature envisaged in nagid-ship?
3. This is the correct, ideological, basis for Alt's very dubious historical hypothesis about Northern kingship being in principle non-dynastic (1953b: 118 =
1966b: 243), a classic instance of projecting as actual ideological claims about
states of affairs in the world. On the one hand, the texts on which he principally
relied for the theory (1 Kgs 14.7-14; 16.2-4; 2 Kgs 9.1-10; 1953b: 121-22, 124 =
1966b: 246, 249-50) clearly present an ideological view of civil-military gover-
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Yet, as discussion of 2 Samuel 7 in Chapters 5 and 6 above indicated,

in the upshot Yahweh does not enforce nagid-ship in its ideologically
pure form, but tacitly compromises it with dynastic succession and
other minor elements of melek-ship. Why? Ultimately, the answer lies
in a pragmatically enforced compromise between pure ideology and
reality, that is, between how our author wished states of affairs to be,
and how he perceived them to be in the world of his experience. But of
course, this compromise is itself ideological, indeed polemically ideological: that is, it is seeking to alter states of affairs from what our
author perceived them to be, to what he believed to be preferable and at
the same time realizable.
9.2.1. Foreshadowings of Compromise in Samuel
That in fact compromise is to be effected between Yahweh's promulgation of his ideal role of nagid and human pursuit of the desired role
of melek is already foreshadowed in the nagid texts in Samuel I have
discussed above in Chapter 8. Thus the first two such texts, within 1
Sam. 9.1-10.16, which present an account of Saul duly appointed nagid
by Yahweh's prophet (9.16, 10.1), are sandwiched between chapters
that present an account of his induction into melek-ship as Yahweh's
choice, also under the supervision of Samuel. Granted, 1 Samuel 8 and
12 in particular define a distinctly grim idea of melek-ship, as a grudging divine concession to human wilfulness (1 Sam. 8.7-9; 12.12-19; cf.
10.18-19). Nonetheless, the melek-sections of 1 Samuel 8-12 allow that
Yahweh was active in the choice of Saul as melek (8.22; 10.20-24;
12.13), and Samuel expounds to the people 'the statute of kingly rule'
(10.25; see further below). Thus, unless Yahweh's actions are to be
viewed schizophrenically, some accommodation between the polar
notions of nagid and melek is already implicated in this juxtaposition.
Then again, while both 1 Sam. 13.13-14 and 25.28-31 tend strongly
nance similar to that found in the nagid texts in Samuel; on the other hand, the evidence on the succession of Northern kings clearly shows that dynastic succession
was always promoted, if by no means always with lasting effect. If I may hazard
here an alternative view, it is that Jehu may well have formed a useful alliance with
a Yahwistic prophetic group vehemently opposed to dynastic succession, by reason
of the virulent Baalism of the Omride dynasty, an alliance given an ideological
slant in 2 Kgs 9. This prophetic ideology notwithstanding, Jehu headed the longest
lasting ruling dynasty in Israel. However, 1 Kgs 14 and 16 are purely ideological
accounts based on 2 Kgs 9, to project a similar powerful role for Yahweh's
prophetic word in the demise of the dynasties of Jeroboam and Baasha.
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to emphasize the polarity of the two notions of leadership, each also

contains an oblique hint at the need for compromise. Samuel, on the
one hand, designates Saul's governance, to which Yahweh's relacement
nagid is to accede, as mamlakd, 'kingly rule' (13.13). Abigail, on the
other, assures David, already appointed nagid (25.30), of a dynasty
('sure house'; p] JT3 25.28; cf. 2 Sam. 7.16). Succession by dynastic
title is a denning feature of melek-ship, but not of nagid-ship, where
designation by the prophetic word is meant to define each incumbent.
The strongest indication of all, however, comes in 2 Sam. 5.2-3,
where the elders of Israel cite David's appointment by Yahweh as
nagid as grounds for their anointing him as melek. Clearly, for the
elders there can hardly have been a logical contradiction involved
between ground and action. But it is worth paying attention to what this
text indicates about the kind of melek-ship they evidently had in mind,
and to which David is shown to commit himself: 'the king David made
an agreement with them in Hebron before Yahweh' ("]"?Qn DP!1? D~D"i
mrv *lb p-Qm rr-a ~m 5.3a(3). This form of words puts David into
the weaker position, the position of one who agrees the terms offered
him.4 Thus what David solemnly binds himself to here 'before Yahweh' is contractual monarchy, a monarchy on terms delimited by the
people and agreed to by the monarch-elect.5 The fact that here the
specific terms are not spelt out for us in no way weakens this significant
conclusion. One can also draw the further conclusion that, whatever the
precise terms, they will have promoted the interests of the people, who
through their representatives were imposing them. From the people's
side David is to be a consensual monarch: they consent to his rule over
them on the terms agreed to by David.
Moreover, some interesting mutual light on the intent of each text is
thrown by comparing 2 Sam. 5.2-3 with 1 Sam. 10.25, Samuel's
'statute of kingly rule' (PDÔn QStDQ), expounded to the people,
solemnly recorded, and ritually stored 'before Yahweh' (mil' MS1?).6
4. While this form of words naturally does not rule out negotiations, it nonetheless clearly implicates that the elders, not David, made the running.
5. One would have imagined that this text would provide a classic biblical
precedent for notions of government as the people's sovereignty, committed in trust
to the one or the few for the welfare of all, on terms delimited by the people, such
as we find elaborated in Locke, Second Treatise of Government, notably in Ch. 8.
Yet although Locke in this chapter cites 2 Sam. 5.2 (1988: 109, 341), neither here
nor anywhere else in either Treatise, to my ascertaining, does he refer to 5.3.
6. These predications of it, especially the last, as well as the narrative context
307
Inferably this also delimited the scope of melek-ship in the interests of

Yahweh and of his people. But in this instance, although the initiative
to institute a melek comes from the people, and thus has their consent
(cf. 10.24), there is no indication of the king-elect being asked to enter
into a covenant with the people on their terms. On the contrary, it is
quite evident here that the statute is imposed upon both king and people
alike by Samuel acting as Yahweh's intermediary. Hence when the
elders of the people subsequently require specific undertakings from
David, the implication is that something moves them to take this step to
safeguard their interests. But whether that something was their experience of Saul's rule, or their fears about how David's rule might
develop, or something else again, is not determinable from the narrative
context.
Despite these different angles of approach, however, the notions of
melek-ship promulgated by Samuel at the foundation of kingship in
Israel, and by the elders at David's institution into kingship over all
Israel, have far more in common with each other than either has with
the very different notion pursued by David in our stretch of text. In fact
both have much more in common with Yahweh's view of ndgid-ship
than with David's view of melek-ship. When Yahweh expounds
David's nagid-ship as promoting the welfare of his people Israel
(2 Sam. 7.8-10), he is promulgating in that respect a notion of governance for the people similar to that of both Samuel and the elders. Thus
up to this point in the story the text of Samuel has provided a basis for
rapprochement between the polar notions of ndgld and melek as
expounded in the immediately preceding two chapters. Yet, having
done so, our stretch of text then polarizes them far more drastically than
has any earlier context in Samuel. Why? As a means of enabling Yahweh decisively to enunciate, through an authoritative divine word, as
his will and purpose for his people a view of the role of the Davidic
monarchy that our author wishes to promulgate.
9.2.2. Polemical Polarization in 2 Samuel 5.17-7.1 la
Given the foregoing textual context to his kingship, David's pursuit in
our stretch of text of an ancient-Near-Eastern-style absolute monarchy
clearly give a positive cast to this ro'TQn ODtCQ, wholly different from the entirely
negative view of the 'rule of the melek' ("pan DDCD 1 Sam. 8.9, 11) as defined in
8.11-18. This latter term is a sardonic play on the term in 10.25, reflecting the
down-side of melek-ship as actually practised by the ruling dynasties.
308
is thus prefigured as a betrayal, both of the foundational definition of

Israelite kingship by the prophet Samuel, and of David's own undertakings solemnly entered into with Yahweh and with Israel. Hardly surprising, then, that his realization of this intention is presented as largely
covert (e.g. 6.8-10, 12), and at times tentative (6.17; 7.1-3). But for all
that the attempt is nonetheless real. David, with no explicit divine mandate, requisitions to his royal capital the ark, powerful symbol of the
victorious divine warrior-king, Yahweh of Hosts. Despite Yahweh's
frightening intervention in this project he persists with it, himself
assuming the role of priest-king who mediates to the people the blessing of the ark's god. Moreover, his ultimate goal is royal control of this
god and his blessing by sequestering the ark within the regal confines
of a replica of his own splendid palace. A far cry, in the space of two
chapters or less, from the contract solemnly agreed with the elders of
Israel 'before Yahweh' (5.3)!
To expose to the reader the inherent duplicity of David's conduct is,
as I demonstrated above in Chapters 4 and 6, a function of the regal
figure of Michal, daughter of king Saul and king David's queen. Thus
through her his profession of adherence to Yahweh's notion of ndgidship, and his claim to be open 'before Yahweh', that is, acting with his
approval and in his interests and those of Yahweh's people, is set in
confrontation with his grasping after the status of melek, for which
Yahweh and his people are to be made subservient to the interests of
David and his royal household. We may now see how the whole delineation of Michal in 2 Samuel 6 is a telling parody of the kind of melekship to which David aspires: her aloofness and distance from the world
of action, her regal disdain of the common people who inhabit it, sardonically symbolize this type of distant, transcendent monarch, permanently absent from most of those from whom he demands allegiance
and honour. How this rapidly became an all-too-unhappy reality for
David 2 Samuel 11-20 narrate. That it ought not to have been so for
David, and how it need not be so in future for David's heirs and the
people they continue to rule under Yahweh, is the message of our text.
In the polemic of our text, then, David's pretension to an ancientNear-Eastern-style monarchy, with a divinely supported dynasty firmly
ensconced in a metropolitan capital exercising absolute power over the
people, centred on two essentials. The first was control of the ark and
its god, since victories over the Philistines apparently demonstrated at
once the enviable power of the divine warrior-king, and his benevolent
309
disposition towards David and his kingship. The second was the building of a royally sponsored temple to house the ark, in order to locate
that god permanently in the royal capital, as it were at the beck and call
of the king. The two essentials thus go together, but to be effective they
presuppose a further monarchic privilege: control of intermediacy.
Hence David himself assumed the priesthood of this god, leading the
ritual procession into the capital, inaugurating the ark-shrine, dispensing the blessing (6.14-20). Such special ceremonial occasions apart,
however, he could be expected to devolve the day-to-day priestly duties
to royal appointees. But priestly pre-eminence, with its concomitants,
royal patronage of, and coercive authority over, mediation of the
blessing of the ark-god,7 were set to continue in David and his successors as melek?
It is to demolish this pretension that the Yahweh of our text rejects
categorically David's plan to build a temple (7.5-7). In doing so Yahweh goes to the heart of the issues involved, so far as our author is concerned. The purpose of the temple is to keep this god transcendent, to
maintain his absence and remoteness from the people, in order to
magnify the special access afforded his monarchic intermediary. Thus
in refutation, Yahweh insists on his historic presence among his people,
calling into play the simplicity and mobility of a tent-shrine to contradict the elaborate splendour and confinement of a temple.9 Yet in thus
7. Thus note that in 2 Sam. 15.24-29 David countermands the initiative of the
priests Abiathar and Zadok, Davidic appointees (cf. 8.17) and supporters, in removing the ark from the control of the usurper Absalom, sending them back with it to
Jerusalem, a royal command they submit to without demur. Coercive authority over
religious functionaries is a feature of absolute monarchy in general: for the situation
in seventeenth-century England see, e.g., the remarks of Burgess (1996: 118-20).
Moreover, even when royal power is devolved upon an elected government, so long
as religious functionaries owe their position to the state, the highest executive of
that government may feel empowered to direct them: cf. the tussles between Prime
Minister Thatcher and some Anglican bishops in the 1980s.
8. According to 2 Sam. 8.18 David's sons were priests, thus witnessing to
David's intention to maintain priestly office as a hereditary royal prerogative.
9. Thus it is a necessity of the polemic to have Yahweh affirm such contraries
to the sinister implications of temple, as our author sees them, and a good part of its
persuasiveness in doing so to deploy against these implications historical tradition
about the means and style of Yahweh's presence among his people before the
unwelcome innovation of the temple. Hence, if you like, our author maintains a
'nomadic ideal' of sorts, but as a ploy dictated by the needs of his polemic, and thus
310
maintaining Yahweh's immanence, the text yields nothing of the divine

sovereignty. For this sovereignty is pre-eminently associated with the
divine word, which addresses itself to the people (7.7). Yahweh is the
god who is constantly present among all his people, making his will
known to them through the divine word. In this instance it is the
absence of his word that matters ('was there ever a word that I
spoke...saying...?', ...1QK^...'n~im ~Qin 7.7). For Yahweh thus to
make a point of the absence of a word from him is to demonstrate its
sovereignty in the life of his people, as the supreme mediator of his will
and purpose. But this point about the absent word, the most telling
argument against David's plan for Yahweh, condemning it as without
any vestige of divine support, is therefore at the same time a powerful
endorsement of the present word to David, in which the text's Yahweh
expounds his plan for David and for Israel.
Yahweh makes clear that the absolute foundation of his plan lies in
David's nagid-ship over Israel and all that that implies: personal exaltation and success for David, yes, but only so as to defer to Yahweh's
people through David the blessing of continuous and secure enjoyment
of their land. Hence Yahweh clearly spells out to David the prime purpose of nagid-ship as Yahweh intended it, that is, promoting the welfare of those who are led. Crucial also is the point that those who are
led are Yahweh's people, the governance of whom is therefore a trust
from Yahweh, to be discharged by Yahweh's appointment and on his
terms. Defining these terms afresh to David, given how manifestly he
has strayed from them, is precisely the purpose of this unsolicited word
from Yahweh, who thus starkly opposes his intention in the role of
nagid to David's notion of the role of melek Yahweh has just rejected.
9.2.3. Polemical Compromise in 7.11b-29
But this ideal figure of self-effacing leader, entirely devoted to the service of Yahweh in promoting the welfare of his people, is not practical
politics. It is a commonplace of human experience that those who seek
positions of leadership do so as much or more from a desire for the
power and status it will confer upon them as from any altruistic sense
of service to others. Yet such leaders are also aware that to assume the
mantle of service goes down well in the eyes of those they lead. More
in a sense and for reasons quite different from those which have hitherto been
implicated in this tag.
311
over, enviable enhancement of power and prestige comes from undisputed control of the succession to leadership, that is, the founding and
maintaining of a ruling dynasty. Then further, for members of this dynasty to enjoy a special relationship with deity exalts the dynasts to a
unique status in the community.
These, then, are the elements of melek-ship conceded by the text's
Yahweh, in order to secure the future of his people under the aegis of a
stable ruling house. But they are not in any way represented as concessions. Rather, they are presented as an unconditional grant by Yahweh
to David and to his successors, sovereignly mediated in an unsolicited
divine word, to a David whom Yahweh has robustly reproved for his
presumption. However, the resultant melek status of the dynastic rulers,
though real, is a point obliquely made: that is, a point conceded as an
unavoidable concomitant, and so conceded tacitly, rather than expounded with conviction as the main intention. The future of Israel is worth
the price of sustaining thus the esteem of the chosen ruling house. So
long, that is, as the pretension of this house does not encroach upon the
prerogative of Yahweh exercised through his sovereign prophetic word.
Hence it is an immensely grateful David who with wondering thanks
accepts the unexpected divine bounty. More, it is a chastened David
who with all due humility submits to the prerogative of the divine king.
But most of all it is a wise David who repeatedly defers to the
sovereignty of Yahweh's word. For through this word freely given he
has the guarantee in perpetuity of the blessing he strove to control.
9.3. Ideological Polemic and the Deference/Deferral
of Difference
In this compromise, then, between the nagid-ship Yahweh intended for

David and the melek-ship David sought for himself, our text cedes to
David's pretension much of the external trappings and status of monarchy, but denies it the supreme domination after which David had
grasped. Hence the categorical rejection of a royal temple for Yahweh,
with its intention to reserve, to a priesthood vested in and controlled by
the monarch, access to this god and mediacy of his power and will.
Hence the insistence on Yahweh's intention in dynastic rulership as
prosecution of his saving purpose for his people. Against the ideology
of exalted temporal and spiritual monarch as supreme deferent of the
divine presence and blessing to his subjects, our text maintains that of
honoured civil governor, leader of the people into peace and security,
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fully subservient to the directive word of Yahweh mediated through his

prophet.
The target of this polemic I identified above under the broad label
ancient-Near-Eastern-style monarchy, a crudely generalizing concept,
the main lineaments of which I sketched in earlier in Chapter 7. But a
very similar high view of melek-ship flourished also in Israel, or at any
rate is evidenced in certain parts of the Hebrew Bible. Thus the exalted
status and special relationship with God of the Davidic monarch as
Yahweh's vicegerent on earth is fulsomely expressed in texts like
Psalm 2 and Isa. 9.5-6[6-7]; Ps. 45.3-10[2-9] extravagantly celebrates
the unparalleled endowment by God of his person and his royal throne;
the perduring divine support for the Davidic dynasty is proclaimed in
Psalms 89 and 132; and the king's role as unique deferent of the divine
will for his people in blessing and salvation is expatiated on in Psalm
72. This brief summary cites only some of the more obvious texts. It is,
however, quite sufficient to show that there was enthusiastic support
within certain circles for a view of melek-ship similar to that against
which our text polemicizes.
The most likely circles within which this ideology of monarchy was
so deeply entrenched and so enthusiastically propagated were, obviously enough, the royal court and the power elite dependent upon it.
But in the nature of the case members of these circles will have been
the least persuadable to a different view. If his hope was to change their
minds en masse, our author would have set himself an almost hopeless
task. To flourish and persist in Israel (Judah) for as long as it did, however, such an ideology must have captivated, and continued to captivate, the hearts and minds of a sufficient number of others whose
interests it did not so directly serve, and indeed, some even to whose
interests, if only they knew it, it was inimical. It is quite possible that,
for example, Isa. 9.5-6[4-5] and other similar royalist texts transmitted
in the prophetic corpus witness to these outer fringes of support. This
potentially softer support for a high royal ideology was, I suggest, a
more likely target for our text's polemic.
But in mounting its trenchant attack on exalted monarchism, our text
does not seek to promote in its place an egalitarian or democratic ideal
of civil government. As we have seen, it is not the people who are to
choose a leader as their representative, nor is theirs the power with
which he is invested, nor theirs the terms which regulate it. No
consensual/contractual monarchy of the kind envisaged in 2 Sam. 5.3 is
313
promulgated in our text. The people is not a sovereignly free and independent polity, for it belongs to Yahweh; it is Yahweh's people. Moreover, their leader is chosen by Yahweh, and the power devolved upon
him is Yahweh's. The polity envisaged by our text is religio-political in
nature, a theocracy in which the sovereignty of Yahweh is to be
entrenched as supreme. Since in our author's view melek-style monarchy gravely infringed the sovereignty of Yahweh, the pretensions of
that monarchy had first to be exposed for what they were, to demonstrate why it needed to be brought into subjection to Yahweh's
sovereign will and purpose for his people.
Theocracy in those terms, however, is but an ideological fiction.10 For
in the end the reputed mind and will of deity are always mediated by
some human agency, whether as detector of natural or supernatural
signs, decoder of dreams or deferent of verbal messages. Thus if, for
example, Exod. 15.1-18 can for the moment consistently represent
Yahweh as himself directly leading and ruling his people, Exod.
20.15/18-19/22 soon rationalizes the need of a human deferent for the
will of a God now seen as hidden and exalted. Deuteronomy gives this
role of Moses imposing theological authority by adding an explicit
divine endorsement (Deut. 5.28-33), and later turns it into a permanent
institution in Israel (Deut. 18.15-22, note esp. 16). Indeed more, for of
the various organs of governance for his people regulated here by
Yahweh (Deut. 16.18-18.22) this is clearly the last and highest. Thus it
takes precedence over the Levitical priests (18.1-8 and 17.8-13), and
over the king (17.14-20), as well as over the civil judges and tribal
officials (16.18-20). Why? Because to this organ alone is committed the
authoritative divine word. The supremacy of the divine word, duly
received and faithfully transmitted by the prophet, over all other forms
of mediation is also elaborated on in the Jeremiah tradition (Jer. 23.1832). The authentic prophet is he who receives his word from the very
council of Yahweh himself (23.18-22), and without this word the
prophet is as empty as the wind (5.13).
Now in our text also this is precisely how divine authority is ultimately devolved. We have seen how 2 Samuel 6 implicitly contrasts
David's failure to consult Yahweh over removal of the ark with his
double consultation in 5.17-25. A strong pragmatic implicature that the
means of this double consultation was priestly notwithstanding, the
10. The point was well made long since by Spinoza (1670: ch. 7).
314
organ of mediation implied there was given no presence in the narrative. How different the situation in 2 Samuel 7! Here the text powerfully deploys a direct rhetoric massively to enforce the sovereign
authority over people and over king of Yahweh's word transmitted
through a prophet. The authentic power of the divine word accurately
mediated (7.5, 8, 17) is set against the empty assurance of Nathan's
courtier's response (7.3), the absolute necessity of an (authentic) word
from Yahweh to authorize action by his human vicegerents is ironically
pressed home (7.6-7), and the overmastering authority of that word
once received is eloquently evidenced by David (7.18-29). Legitimate
and effective within their properly appointed sphere as the other means
of mediating the divine will and purpose to humanity may be, above
them all, above tribal official, above priest, yes, and above Yahweh's
chosen nagid-king, the prophet as deferent of the authentic divine word
reigns supreme.
Thus this powerful polemic which champions the divine prerogative
against an overweening royal pretension effectively locates that prerogative for all human purposes in the institution of prophecy. The people
of Yahweh, including all its leaders, is to have full confidence that the
properly received and mediated word of Yahweh defers to it the
sovereign will of its God Yahweh. Thus theocracy comes down to
prophetocracy. This latter as an ideal polity for Israel has been portrayed through the figure of Samuel in the early chapters of Samuel.
There it was contrasted, on the one hand, with the way the priestly
mediation of the Elides had dismally failed the people (1 Sam. 1-6),
and on the other, with the grave dangers impending from monarchy
(1 Sam. 8-12). Thus the threat of monarchy is not merely to the
authority of Samuel, the one who 'tells the people all the words of Yahweh' (1 Sam. 8.10), but through it to that which lies behind it, the
ultimate authority of Yahweh himself (8.6-7). Hence there pervades
1 Samuel 12, where Samuel presents Israel with her king (12.13), an
oppressive sense of mutual hostility and exclusive rivalry, between a
proved polity of prophetic leadership and the ill-starred polity of
monarchic domination set to supersede it.
That way of representing the matter is all very well before monarchy
has established itself, but once it has done within the story of David,
there is no way that prophecy could persuasively promote the suppression of monarchy. Nor can it realistically have expected to obliterate
the temple. The best prophecy can now do is ideologically to accom-
315
modate itself to melek-ship. This it can do, by devolving upon the latter
through an authentic divine word much of the power and status of
monarchy, while seeking to rein in its excesses and direct it towards a
divinely appointed destiny to promote the welfare of Yahweh's people.
But at the same time prophecy promotes the accommodation of melekship to itself, by reserving to itself the ultimate sovereignty of the
divine prerogative, through control of the authoritative divine word.
What way of commending this compromise could be more persuasive
than to present it as wholeheartedly embraced by the very founder of
the Davidic dynasty himself, divinely chastened after an abortive
attempt to usurp the divine prerogative?
In the light of these reflections, our stretch of text betrays something
of the interests lying behind its polemic. Clearly our author is writing
from the point of view of one who is not a thoroughgoing royalist, but
of one who has an exalted regard for the power and authority of the
prophetic word of Yahweh. Yet strong as his ideological commitment
shines through the rhetoric, there is also a strong element of the pragmatist in the way the ideal of the humble ndgid, governing the people
of Yahweh under direction by Yahweh through his prophet, is merged
into the practical reality of the exalted melek, ruling a political state in a
dynasty inaugurated and sustained by the word of the same Yahweh.
Thus at the end of our stretch of text a persuasively argued resolution of
the conflicting claims of royal pretension and divine prerogative has
been presented in terms of an accommodation between monarchy and
prophecy, which curtails the excessive pretensions of Davidic monarchy, and reserves to prophecy the last word on divine prerogative.
But for all the persuasiveness of its rhetoric, does this compromise
really spell an end to competition and conflict between those who seek
to sanction the imposition of their will on the majority by appeal to
divine authority? Certainly not, if all do not readily acquiesce in the
claim of prophecy to the final word on behalf of God. There is ample
evidence in the Hebrew Bible to show that not kings, nor priests, nor
those termed 'the wise' were willing to cede this. But even were this
ceded, problems do not cease. For prophecy was by no means itself
univocal, and could promulgate diametrically opposed words as having
the divine imprimatur. Texts I referred to earlier as promoting the
supremacy of the prophetic word, to cite no others, are acutely aware of
the difficulty (cf. Deut. 18.20-22; Jer. 23.21-22). These texts stigmatize
the word of the other as false, as a way of maintaining the authenticity
316
of the Mosaic prophet, or of a Jeremiah against his contemporaries. Not

necessarily as simple a choice as these texts would have it. But what if
the false and the true may issue from one and the same prophet? Our
text, through a key element of its own rhetoric, gives rise to exactly this
problem. However much it protests that Nathan's second word is Yahweh's authentic word, and by implication that his first was inauthentic,
David had only Nathan's word for this, we readers have only the
author's. Nor does the nostrum prescribed by Deuteronomy, 'wait and
see' (Deut. 18.22), answer to David's case, if indeed it answers to any
satisfactorily. For the 'predictive' element in this divine word is precisely set for fulfilment after David's death, whereas his response to its
negative demands must be immediate! It is ever thus with the prophetic
word, that it demands immediate moral response on the basis of
promises or sanctions set in the, often indefinite, future. For the
reflective reader, David's total deference to Yahweh's word is but the
deferral of a difference that lurks still behind its persuasive claim to
authority.
But these are not problems peculiar to our stretch of text, even if they
arise from it in a particular way. To explore them any further here
would take us far beyond the bounds of what this book can attempt. Let
it suffice that the text on which we have focused, in reflecting on the
issues involved with considerable insight, and skilfully embedding an
attempt at a resolution of them into a narrative sequence of central
importance in the story of David in Samuel, can stimulate the reflection
of other readers in other contexts wholly beyond the ken of its author
and his envisaged readers.
GLOSSARY OF SOME TECHNICAL TERMS

Note: except where it appeared necessary to do otherwise, each definition has been framed in reference to the first-listed grammatical form
only in each set of terms. The definitions offered are purely practical,
and specifically relate to my use of the terms. Readers will find reference to more detailed discussion in appropriate places in the foregoing
chapters. As a pragmaticist I do not adhere to the principle of the
excluded middle, and am not embarrassed to acknowledge that terms
inevitably have areas where they shade into one another, as, for
example, 'explicature' and 'implicature', or 'envisaged author' and
'implied author'. This does not mean that they do not also have useful
areas of distinction. In the grey areas, however, which term to use is a
matter of which aspect of what is being discussed is relevant in the
context.
abduction, abductive: the construction of a context in order to give
meaning to a set of observations, and to draw further conclusions therefrom. Textual interpretation is thus a form of abductive reasoning.
(Holmesian detection is abductive, not deductive!)
a fortiori argument: the 'how much more' form of argument, which
claims that if x is the case, then y must/ought even more to be the case.
anacoluthon, anacoluthonic: failure in a subsequent part of an utterance
to maintain strict grammatical cohesion with a preceding part.
anaphora, anaphor, anaphoric: reference back to an element or elements enunciated earlier in the text (anaphora, anaphoric); an element
which so refers back (anaphor).
apodosis: the principal, and normally second, part of a two-limbed
utterance. Sometimes in English introduced by the temporal-cumlogical discourse operator 'then'. See protasis.
318
cohesion, cohesive, discourse-cohesive: the quality of the parts of a text

that they fit together in the order in which they occur, such that the
hearer/reader can make sense of the text.
discourse: a string of utterances that so coheres as to be recognizable by
a hearer/reader as a unified text.
envisaged author/reader: the reader/author as consciously and/or subliminally constructed by the author in composing and the reader in
reading: a pragmatic notion.
explicate, explicature: the drawing out of the semantically implied
meaning of an utterance.
extratextual: referring beyond the bounds of a defined set of texts. In
this work the set is defined as the Hebrew Bible. See also intertextual,
intratextual.
given-new: information in an utterance presented as already known
(given), or as made known for the first time in the context (new).
hendiadys: expressing what can be taken as a single notion by two
coordinate terms, rather than by a principal and a subordinate. A
famous example is the opening of Virgil's Aeneid: arma virumque
cano; literally 'arms and the man I sing' = (in part) 'the fighting man/
military hero, is the subject of my song'.
implicate, implicature: the implying by an utterance of something other
than the mere explicature of what is strictly said/written, that something
being derivable from the context of the utterance.
implied author/reader: a narrator or commentator (author) and/or his/
her addressee (reader) deployed as part of the poetics of the text.
inclusio: a rhetorical figure in which there is significant repetition in
what is thus marked as the end of a unit from what is thus marked as its
beginning.
intertextual: referring to other text within the bounds of a defined set of
texts, but not within the stricter bounds of text more closely related: see
also extratextual, intratextual.
intratextual: Referring to other text within the bounds of closely related
text. In this work these bounds are defined by the text of Samuel. See
also extratextual, intertextual.
Glossary of Some Technical Terms
319
kataphora, kataphoric: reference forward to an element or elements

enunciated later in the text.
optimal relevance: the presupposition that what is said/written relates
felicitously to the context of its utterance.
performative: an utterance understood to effect an action merely by its
utterance, when appropriately uttered.
pragmatic presupposition: information or a belief about states of affairs
in the world necessary to or relevant to understanding an utterance but
not explicitly referred to by it.
processing effort: the mental effort, whether conscious or subliminal,
required of a hearer/reader to interpret an utterance or a string of
utterances.
protasis: the supporting, and normally first, part of a two-limbed utterance, which enunciates material relevant to the assertion of the principal part (apodosis, which see above). In English usually introduced by
a discourse-logical operator such as 'because', 'if, 'when' or 'where'.
qdtal: a Hebrew verb form, normally having past (sometimes present)
reference in prose.
salience, salient: the quality of 'sticking out', the giving to part of an
utterance/discouse/text the greatest prominence or emphasis within the
utterance/discourse/text.
topic-comment: the focal subject of a segment of discourse (topic), and
what is said about it in the segment (comment).
wayyiqtol: a Hebrew verb form, usually part of a sequence of at least
two verbs, normally having past reference in prose.
weqdtal: a Hebrew verb form, usually part of a sequence of at least two
verbs, normally having future reference in prose.
weyiqtol: a Hebrew verb form, often expressive of wish or intention,
also used in modal utterances expressing purpose.
x-qdtal, x-yiqtol: forms of utterance in Hebrew which for emphasis
place another element ahead of the verb, thus inverting standard Hebrew prose word order.
yiqtol: a Hebrew verb form, normally having future (sometimes present) reference in prose.
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Kleiner, Michael
1995
Saul in En-DorWahrsagung oder Totenbeschworung?: Eine synchrone
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Klostermann, August
1887
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Kropat, Arno
1909
Die Syntax des Autors der Chronik verglichen mit der seiner Quellen: Ein
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Labat, Ren
1939
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Lackenbacher, Sylvie
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Tammuz and Ishtar (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
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1983
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Lichtheim, Miriam
1973-80
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1984
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1979
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'13i> 'abad', ThWAT, V: 982-1012.
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1926
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The Succession to the Throne of David (trans. Michael D. Rutter and
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1970
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INDEXES
INDEX OF REFERENCES
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis
4.5
4.25
6.22
9.9
11.4
12.20
14.24
15.4-5
15.4
15.5
15.13
17.6
17.7
17.8
17.9
17.10
17.19
22.17
24.27
26.4
29.14
30.16
31.36
34.5
35.11
35.12
39.19
44.18
46.26
48.4
126
188
103
190
206
131
138
189
189
188, 189
69
189
189, 190
189, 190
190
190
190
188
141
188
295
141
126
89
189
190
126
126
190
190
Exodus
1.5
1.11-12
190
69
1.21
3-4
3
3.7
3.9
3.11
4.1
4.12
4.15
4.22
5.1
5.2
5.23
6.11
7.6
7.20
12.28
15.1-18
15.8
15.9
15.10
15.11-18
15.11
15.13
15.17
15.20-21
18
18.10
18.21-22
18.25-26
19.11
19.12-13
20.15
20.18-19
71, 188
286
286
286
286
202, 286
286
286
286
286
286
202
286
286
103
103
103
269, 297,
313
52
138
52
120
205
269
269
140
174
141
184
184
70
124
313
313
20.22
23.28-30
25.10-13
28.43
32.6
33.12-13
33.12
313
82
123
190
123
164
68
Leviticus
5.2-3
6.10
124
138
Numbers
3.25
4.5-6
4.15
11.10-25
14.17
16.15
16.30-33
21.2
25.13
31.36
68
234
234
174
207, 208
126
131
94
190
138
Deuteronomy
1.8
1.16
3.24
4.7-8
4.7
4.20
4.32
4.37
5.26
5.28-33
190
184
77, 205
205
69
287
69
190
205
313
332
7.5
7.6-7
7.21
8.2
8.15
9.5
9.26
9.29
10.1-3
10.8
10.14-15
10.15
10.21
12.3
16.18-18.22
16.18-20
17.8-13
17.14-20
17.18
18.1-8
18.8
18.15-22
18.20-22
18.22
21.8
26.3
27.26
30.18
31.25
32.9
33.29
97
205
205
80
80
83
77, 205, 287
287
123
234
205
190
80, 205
97
313
313
313
313
72
313
138
313
315
316
205
70
83
70
234
287
205
Joshua
3.3
7.7
7.8
9.17
15.9
15.10
15.11
15.29
15.60
18.14
22.8
23.9
24.12
24.18
234
77
203, 204
54
54
54
54
54
54
54
138
170
82
82
Judges
2.3
2.16-19
3.10
4.7
4.9
4.14
4.17
4.18
4.22
5.4-5
5.4
5.12
5.16
5.28-30
5.30
6.9
6.14
6.22
6.27
6.34
8.30
8.31
9.2
9.37
9.38
11.29
11.30
11.34
14.6
14.19
15
15.9
15.14
16.4
16.22
19.13-16
20
20.18
20.23
20.26
20.27
20.28
82
184
288
94
94
94
140
140
140
120
52, 101
140
134
134
138
82
288
77
103
288
190
205
295
78
202
288
94
140
288
288
50
50
288
28
77
56
56,93
92,93
92,93
92, 137, 201
92, 201
93,94
Ruth
1.1
4.4
4.9
184
84, 209
131
4.12
4.14
1 Samuel
1-6
1.3
1.9-13
1.9
1.11
1.12
1.22
1.24-28
2.11
2.18-20
2.18
2.28
2.30
2.35
3-4
3
3.1-21
3.1-2
3.3
3.13
4-6
4
4.1-7.2
4.3-4
4.4
4.10-11
4.10
4.12-19
4.12
5-
5
5.2
5.3
5.6
5.7
5.9
5.11
5.23 LXX
6
6.1-7.2
196
141
314
130
63
171
130, 131,
188
63
194
121
121
121
133
133, 158
158
291
32
133
121
133
171
70
234
121,235
32
119
119,121,
130, 131,
201
118
121
234
64
121, 130
234
130
66, 97, 285
308
121
121
121
121
51
123, 125
118
Index of References
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.5
6.7-12
6.7
6.8-10
6.9
6.10
6.12
6.13
6.14
6.15
6.17
6.19-20
6.19
6.20
6.21-7.2
6.21-7.1
6.21
7
7.1-3
7.1-2
7.1
7.2
7.3-14
7.3-4
7.7
7.8-10
7.8
7.9-10
7.10
7.12
7.13-14
8-12
8
8.6-7
8.7-9
8.9
8.10
8.11-18
8.11
8.22
9.1-10.16
9.1-14
9.1-2
9.1
9.3-6
130
55, 121, 123 9.6-14
9.15-10.9
121
9.15-16
121
9.15
234
121
9.16-17
308
9.16
121
121
121, 308
234
121, 123
9.17
125
9.18-19
308
10.1
121, 125
125-27, 234
125, 234
121
234
54,130,291 10.1 LXX
10.2-10
119
10.5-6
308
10.6
54
54, 121, 122, 10.7
10.8
130, 234
10.9
234
10.10-13
121
10.10
235
10.14-16
89,90
10.16
64
10.17-25
285, 291
10.17-19
121
10.18-19
64
10.20-24
121
10.22
121
10.24
305, 314
10.25-26
287, 305
10.25
314
11.1-11
305
11.6
307
314
12
12.12-19
307
12.13
307
13-14
146, 305
13.7-14
305
13.7
285
13.8
287
13.10-14
287
287
287
299
285
84, 209, 285,
287
285
50, 282, 283
285, 286,
288, 290,
291, 297,
305
285, 288
287
50, 282, 283,
285, 286
290, 291
296, 297
305
142, 286
63
288
288, 296
288, 289
289
63
288
288, 296
287
287
287
287
305
291, 305
92
283, 307
146
306, 307
288
288
305, 314
305
305, 314
53
193, 289
289
289
299
333
13.10
13.11
13.12
13.13-14
13.13
13.14
14.3
14.13
14.18
14.22
14.36-37
14.37
15.1-35
15.1
15.2
15.11
15.24-27
15.24
15.34
16.13
17.28
17.37
17.45-52
17.45
17.48
18.2-5
18.6-7
18.7
18.8
18.9
18.18
18.19
18.27
18.29
19.12
20.1
20.7
20.12
20.13
20.15
20.23
20.31
22.1-2
22.1
22.2
65, 289
289
289
289, 305
289, 306
66, 70, 282
289, 291,
296, 297,
300
92, 133
133
92
89
92
92
193
49
130
126
193
289
146
288, 296
126
167
63
130
63
291
140
123
126
291
202
145
291
291
291
88
126
209
209
194
194
291
114,291
88,89
115
334
22.4-5
22.5
22.6
22.8
22.17-18
22.17
22.20
22.23
23.1-12
23.2
23.3
23.4
23.5
23.6-12
23.6
23.8
23.9
23.10-12
23.11-12
23.11
23.13-14
23.13
23.14
23.15
23.17
23.18
23.25
23.27-24.3
24.1
24.2-3
24.3
24.3
24.4-8
24.6
24.9-16
24.9
24.10-22
24.17-22
24.21
24.22
24.23
25
25.5-8
25.9-13
25.10
25.13-22
25.13
25.18-22

88
109
89, 114
209
133
209
92
88
92
92
114
78, 92, 94
114
93, 109
92
115
92
92
93
92,93
291
114, 115
87
88
128
146
87,89
115
89
291
115, 116
87, 115, 116
291
28
291
202
294
292
294
190
89, 146
142
292
292
202
292
115
63
25.20
25.23-24
25.24
25.25
25.26
25.27
25.28-31
63
292
292
292
292
65, 292
292, 300,
305
25.28
71, 188,29294, 300
25.29
88, 292, 293
25.30
66, 142, 282
290-93, 297,
300, 306
25.31
292, 293
25.32-35
292
25.32
65, 142, 300
25.39
89, 141
26
115
26.2
87, 115, 116
26.9
28
26.17
202
26.19
202, 287
26.23
88
27-2 Sam. 1 129
27-30
32
27.1-4
88
27.1
87
27.2
115
27.3-4
88
27.4
87
27.5
88
28.6
92
30.7-8
93
30.8
92,94
30.9
92, 115
30.10
115
30.24
138
31
295
2 Samuel
1
2-4
2.1-4
2.1
2.4
2.5-4.32
2.5
30, 295
295
26, 295
92
49
26
274
2.7
2.22
3.1-5
3.1
3.2-14
3.2-5
3.6-21
3.6
3.12-16
3.14
3.18
3.19^.1
3.22-39
4
4.1
4.4
5
5.1-12
5.1-3
5.1-2
5.1
5.2-3
5.2
5.3-4
5.3
5.4-16
5.4-5
5.6-12
5.6-9
5.7-9
5.7
5.9
5.10-16
5.10
5.11
5.12
5.13-8.18
5.13-16
5.14-16
5.14
5.16
5.17-7.29
49, 274
78
29
29, 235
235
29
295
29
134
30, 135
30
235
295
295
89
295
46
257
26,85
295
295
306
174, 282,
283, 290,
291,295-97,
300, 306
122
29, 85, 89,
297, 306,
312
28, 30, 85
29
253
26
88
89
88,89
29
29, 55, 232
29, 140
29, 229, 232,
245
27
27,29
229
29
30
20, 25-28,
Index of References
5.17-7.11
5.17-6.8
5.17-29
5.17-25
5.17-21
5.17-19
5.17-18
5.17
5.18
5.19-20
5.19
5.20
5.21
30, 33, 35,

37, 38, 232
245, 247,
257
307
46
28
27,30-35,
53, 86, 87,
103, 105,
109, 110,
112-14, 120
122, 129,
134, 137,
150, 158
164, 180
231-34, 245,
252, 255
313
86, 87, 103
107, 108,
111,143,
232
99
98,115
28-30,32,
50, 87-92,
97,98, 103106,115,
131, 132
232, 245,
254
91,92,97,
104, 105
108
33, 52, 88,
92-94, 98,
100, 103105, 108,
129, 233
33, 60, 9497, 102-105,
108, 113,
120, 125,
127, 128,
157, 232,
235,255
32, 96, 97,
5.22-25
5.22-23
5.22
5.23-25
5.23-24
5.23
5.23 LXX
5.24
5.25
6-7
6
6.1-7.3
6.1-23
102, 104
6.1-20
105, 114,
115,118,
6.1-11
122
86, 93, 95,
6.1-10
98, 106-108, 6.1-4
6.1-2
111, 143,
232
99
53,98,106, 6.1
108, 114,
115
108, 109
6.2-20
98, 100, 108, 6.2-6
109,113,
6.2-5
120, 232
6.2
33,51,52,
92, 98, 100
101, 106
109, 129,
233, 254
51
6.3-4
100, 101
103, 120
6.3
54, 56, 86,
97, 102, 10
108, 113,
6.4
116, 119,
136, 161,
232
64
6.5-10
6.5
28, 31, 34,
35, 46, 53,
62,87,91,
98, 102,11013, 116, 11
20, 142, 14
156, 158
6.6-8
160, 161
6.6-7
166, 210,
6.6
226, 231,
233, 235-37,
239, 254,
308, 313
6.7-11
6.7-8
179, 180
6.7
210, 226
27, 30-32,
112,113
335
147, 149-52,
155, 253
113,145,
151,234
113,137
113
113, 134
146, 147,
150
53,54,11417, 136, 13
146, 152
161
125
116,117
64, 101, 11
118, 122
130, 146,
152, 153,
176,201,
236
117, 122
133, 152
32, 56, 97,
117, 121
122, 125
234, 236
32, 56, 59,
60,97, 124
125, 236
67
57-59, 62,
67, 123, 12
133, 152
157,201,
234, 238,
243
234
122, 123
125, 152
59,117,124,
125, 234,
236
33, 235
127, 128
60, 67, 96,
124-27, 235,
236
336
6.8-10
6.8
6.9-12
6.9-10
6.9
6.10-22
6.10
6.11-12
6.11
6.12-20
6.12-17
6.12
6.13-20
6.13-15
6.13
6.14-20
6.14-15
6.14
6.15
6.16

235
33, 67, 96,
125-28, 133,
152,235
157
128, 136,
235, 236
98, 128, 129
157, 234-36
47
67, 98, 120,
128, 129,
132, 157,
234-36
131, 149,
153
91, 130, 131,
146, 149,
153, 156,
189
114,131,
146, 151,
154
63
61,63,91,
120, 131-34,
136, 139,
149, 152,
153, 156,
157,211,
236, 238,
245
246
63
32,61,125,
133, 136
309
123
57,61,124,
133-35, 137,
157, 201,
234, 238
117,123,
133, 134
62-64, 120,
136, 138-40,
152-54, 156,
157,213,
6.17-19
6.17
6.18-20
6.18-19
6.18
6.19-20
6.19
6.20-23
6.20-22
6.20-21
6.20
6.21
236, 237,
6.21 LXX
243
6.21-22
133
31,64,124,
125, 136,
6.22
137, 152-54,
157, 161,
201, 226,
237-39,243 6.23-7.15
146, 147,
6.23-25
150, 153
6.23-24
31, 137, 146, 6.23
153
55, 64, 130,
132, 139,
146, 150,
157, 176,
211,237,
6.25
245
7
143, 146
64, 129, 138,
139, 143,
146, 150
31,114,139,
146, 153,
154, 156,
213
136, 154,
237
132, 164
31,66,114,
132, 134,
138-41, 143,
148, 152-54,
156,211,
7.1-29
237-39, 245,
297
62-66,75,
7.1-17
124, 128,
142, 148,
158, 178,
194,201,
7.1-16
226, 237-39, 7.1-7
241, 243,
7.1-3
244, 282,
284, 296-98,
300
244,245
144, 154,
178, 202,
244
66, 143, 144,
158, 182,
237, 238,
244, 298
48
143
143
129, 134,
138, 139,
141, 143,
145, 153
161, 237,
239
143
11,20,27,
28,31,3335, 74, 76,
77, 83, 87,
110, 111,
116,156,
159-64, 166,
179, 185,
211,226,
231, 239,
244, 248,
250-52,261,
270, 278,
279,281,
300, 301,
303-305,314
27, 30, 31,
211,226,
239
162, 198,
218,221,
223, 228,
229
24
233
27, 160, 16264, 175, 200,
210, 212,
220,221,
228, 239,
Index of References
7.1-2
7.1-29
7.1
7.2-16
7.2-3
7.2
7.3
7.4-17
7.4-16
7.4-8
7.4-7
7.4-5
240, 246,
7.4
253, 261
161, 185,
200, 212
7.5-16
162
31,146,160, 7.5-11
161, 163
164, 184,
7.5-10
190, 191,
7.5-7
201,211,
212,219,
228, 239
276
169, 200,
204, 208,
210, 223
245
31, 161, 163
66, 171, 18
187, 191,
201, 202,
7.5
211,212,
219, 228,
239, 242,
243, 261,
263
164, 166
167, 173
177, 179,
199, 204,
208,211,
223, 224,
7.6-7
233, 243,
260, 262,
267, 278
300, 314
162, 223,
7.6
251,258
27, 162
162
160, 167
212, 251
262, 263
7.7
163, 167,
199,211,
212, 220,
224
162, 167
177, 243,
300
176, 253,
261
220, 222,
229
67
173, 175-78,
180, 184,
187, 191,
193, 196-99,
208,212,
213,216,
220, 222,
228, 229,
233, 240,
245, 262,
263, 269,
300, 309
72,77,16771, 175-79,
185-88, 191,
192, 197,
201, 202,
209,211,
215,216,
218-20, 22224, 228, 240,
242, 263,
270, 314
169, 171,
173, 177,
192, 219,
220, 223,
314
166, 171-74,
184, 201,
205, 212,
216,218,
219, 222,
240
170-75, 180,
188, 190,
197, 209,
211,214,
219, 222,
224, 229,
337
7.8-16
7.8-11
7.8-10
7.8-9
7.8
7.9-10
7.9
7.10-11
7.10
240,241,
263-66,310
246, 294,
300
69, 160, 162
176, 177,
181,186,
187, 193,
204,215,
219, 220,
222, 223,
228, 242,
244, 246,
265, 266,
268, 294
178, 180,
185, 269,
300, 307
175, 177,
180-82,241
55, 64, 67,
130, 142,
163, 168,
171, 174,
176-79, 190,
199, 203,
211,215,
216, 222,
224, 229,
240, 241,
265, 267,
282, 284,
297, 298,
300,314
180-82,298
69, 70, 178
84, 203, 205
222,241,
266, 267
183, 184,
215, 241
67, 69, 88,
137, 177,
181, 183,
184, 215,
216, 222,
241, 243,
267, 269
338
7.11-29
7.11-17
7.11-16
7.11-12
7.11
7.12-16
7.12-15
7.12
7.12
7.13-16
7.13-14
7.13
7.13 LXX
7.14-17
7.14-16
7.14-15

310
7.14
160, 215
162, 181,
7.15
185, 194,
195, 204,
242, 246,
7.16-7.29
298
7.16
194, 197,
198, 228
69-71, 76,
164, 170,
184-88, 190,
192, 193,
195, 196,
209,215,
7.17
216, 219,
220, 222-24,
242, 269,
270, 294
185, 190,
199,217
7.18-29
72, 188, 196,
197, 216
71,72,18891, 193-96,
198, 216,
7.18-21
219, 221,
223, 230,
7.18-19
242, 244,
272
7.18
298
195
206
72, 76, 82,
162, 170,
7.19
191-99, 216,
221, 242,
244, 270,
272
72
7.20-21
109
7.20
195-98, 219,
221, 223,
7.21-24
228, 230,
7.21
243
193-96, 242,
275, 276
73, 193, 203, 7.22-24

221,273-75
73-75, 193,
7.22
244, 273,
274
49
7.23-24
7.23
71, 75, 76,
185, 194-98, 7.23 LXX
7.24
209, 212,
215, 216,
7.25-29
221, 242,
244, 269,
272, 294,
7.25-27
298, 306
7.25-26
103, 162,
7.25
199,211,
215,221,
224, 230,
240, 243,
300, 314
7.25 LXX
27, 160, 162, 7.26-29
197-99, 224, 7.26
229, 230,
243, 277,
300, 314
162, 200,
7.27
224
202, 204,
205
74, 199-203,
208, 226,
7.28-29
229, 243,
7.28
244, 246,
211
74, 77, 79,
202, 203,
7.29
210, 225,
229, 243,
244, 246
204, 205
74, 78, 79,
203, 204
8
243
79, 80, 200,
8.1-15
8.1-14
204, 208,
8.1
210, 225,
229, 246
162, 200,
205, 225
74, 76, 162,
202, 205,
208, 277
205
79-82, 205
81,82
82, 206
162, 200,
207, 225,
277
83, 210, 243
209
68,71,74,
76, 83, 162,
200, 207-10,
225, 229,
244, 246
82
207
55, 64, 78,
83, 130, 208,
209, 226,
244
55,64,71,
83, 84, 130,
170, 208-10,
229, 244,
246
225
74, 84, 208,
210, 225,
229, 244,
246
27, 28, 30,
31,74,83,
110,132,
210,211,
225, 226,
229, 244-46,
278, 280
27,28
27
27
28,30,116,
161
339
Index of References
8.13
8.15-18
8.17
8.18
9
9.1-13
10
10.1
10.2
10.9
11-20
12
12.5-6
12.7-15
12.9
12.13-14
12.15
13
13.1
13.21
14.4-17
14.7
14.15
14.16
14.17
14.24
15.24-29
15.27-28
16.2
16.11
16.13
17.1-17
17.12-16
17.23
17.30-39
18.28
19.13
19.14
19.24
20
20.19
21-24
21.1
21.3
21.8
21.18
22.8
22.17
206
27
309
309
28
27
28
28
274
115
308
28
126, 127
109
70
193
146
28
28
126
225
282
225
225, 287
167, 225
146
122, 309
165
282
189
57
219
195
146
267
141
295
295
70
26
287
26
109
287
145
28
126
58
22.23
23.1-13
23.13-17
23.13
23.14
24.11-14
24.16
1 Kings
1.26
1.35
1.48
2.4
2.24
2.26
2.45
2.46
5.17
5.19
5.21
6.12
7.8
8.15-26
8.15-21
8.15-20
8.16
8.16 LXX
8.17
8.18
8.19
8.20
8.23-26
8.23-25
8.23
8.26
8.44
8.48
8.51
8.53
9.5
10.9
11.2
12.15
14
14.7-14
14.7-11
14.7
16
106
110
91
88
88
109
58
170
282-84
141
83
71,188
76,77
73
73
72
72
141
83
71,188
276
83
199, 276
68, 174, 285
284
72
72
72, 189
72,83
276
276
205
83
72
72
287
76, 77, 287
72
141
285
83
305
304
299
284, 299
305
16.2-4
16.2
17.7
19.15
19.16
21.18
299, 304
284, 299
285
49
50
300
2 Kings
6.5
6.24
7.13
8.6
8.7
9
9.1-10
9.6
9.12
9.30-31
17.34
19.14-15
19.15
19.19
20.5
20.18
21.14
23.3
23.22
23.24
285
28
138
131
64
305
304
283
283
134
205
201
210
207
282
189
287
83
184
83
1 Chronicles
1.18
2.3
6.2
11.4-9
11.9
11.10-12.41
11.15
11.16
13-17
13.1-5
13.1
13.4
13.5-6
13.5
13.6-7
13.6
13.7
13.8
72
72
64
55
55
55
88
88
37,38
55
282
57
54
55
57
54-56, 64
56
57,58
340
13.8LXX
13.9
13.10
13.11
13.12
13.13
13.14
14.8-17
14.8
14.9
14.10
14.11
14.12
14.13
14.14
14.16
15
15.1-24
15.1
15.2
15.12-15
15.13
15.16
15.18-19
15.18
15.19-24
15.19
15.20
15.21
15.22
15.24
15.25
15.26
15.27
15.28
15.29
16
16.1
16.2
16.3
16.5
16.20
16.38
16.42
16.43
17
17LXX

57
58, 59, 124
59,60,124,
125
96
60
60
60, 130
55
50
50
92
96
51,97
50
50-52, 92
53
130
61
71, 137,188
125, 234
125
125
58
61
130
58
58
66
130
66
130
61
61
61,133
58
62-64, 66
130
64
55
64,65
130
68
130
58
146
73, 74, 77
77
17.1
17.2
17.4
17.5
17.6
17.7
17.8-9
17.8
17.8 LXX
17.10
17.11
17.12
17.12 LXX
17.13
17.13 LXX
17.14
17.16
17.17
17.18
17.19
17.20
17.21
17.21 LXX
17.22
17.23-24
17.23
17.24
17.25
17.26
17.27
17.28
17.29
19.10
22.7
22.8
22.9
22.10
22.19
25.1
25.6
26.4-8
26.5
26.15
27.16
67, 146, 164

67
72
67,68
68, 184
55
68
69
69
70,71,164
72, 190
72
72
74
75
75
74,76
74, 76, 77
76, 78, 79
74, 76, 78,
79
74, 78, 79
78-81
81
82
83
74,82
55,83
55, 76, 78,
84, 210
74, 76, 78,
84
74, 76, 78,
84
78
76,78
115
72
72
164
72,76
72
58
58
130
130, 131
130
282
28.3
28.5
29.14
29.16
29.22
29.23
72
72,75
202
72
50
75
2 Chronicles
1.6
1.9
5.12
5.13
6.5
6.7
6.8
6.9
6.10
6.17
6.34
6.38
6.41
6.42
11.11
13.8
14.9
17.13
17.13 LXX
19.11
28.7
29.25
30.21
31.12
31.13
32.21
35.8
35.9
137
83
58
58
284
72
72
72
72
83
72
72
76
76
282
75
50
73
73
282
282
58
57
58
58, 282
282
282
58
Ezra
7.27
9.10
141
203, 204
Nehemiah
3.33
4.1
4.9
6.16
9.7
9.10
89
89
89
89
205, 210
206
341
Index of References
9.32
13.13
207
138
Job
28.22
29.9
29.10
33.16
36.10
36.15
205
282
282
209
209
209
Psalms
2
18
18.8-20
18.8
18.11
18.12-16
18.16
18.17
18.32
18.50
22
22.2-3
22.4-6
22.7-9
28.9
33.12
35.10
35.27
39.8
40.17
44.2
44.5
45.3-10
45.18
48.3-9
60.7-10
61.5
61.8
66.20
68.8
68.10
68.13-14
70.5
71.19
72
78.60
312
120
120
126
120
120
52
58
205
205
225
225
225
225
287
287
205
205, 208
207
205, 208
205
210
312
205
120
120
201
201
73
52, 101
287
134
205, 208
205
312
68
78.62
78.71
78.72
79.1
80
80.2-3
80.2
80.3
80.5
80.8
80.13-16
80.15
80.20
84
84.2-8
84.7
84.7
86.8
86.10
89
89.4
89.9
89.18-36
89.20-38
89.21
89.29
89.35[3
89.37-50
89.39-52
89.40
89.48-50
94.5
95.14
99
99.1
104.1
105.13
106.5
106.9
106.40
108.7-10
108.12
113.5
132
132.8
132.9
287
174, 287
174
287
120
120
119
119
119
119
120
119
119,120
120
120
101
120
205
205
242, 276,
312
276
205
242
221
222
276
276
242
222, 276
276
242
287
287
120
120
205
68
287
80
287
120
101
205
245, 269,
272, 312
76
76
132.11
132.15
136.16
72, 190
139
80
Proverbs
28.15
28.16
29.4
29.14
282
282
282
282
Isaiah
7.3
8.23-9.6
9.2
9.5-6
17.5
19.25
22.14
28.17-19
28.21
29.6
29.7
37.14-15
37.15
37.16
37.20
39.7
44.28
45.5
48.19
61.1
63.11
63.12-13
63.12
63.17
64.7
300
183
138
312
124
287
209
94,95
94,95
52
89
201
201
201,210
207
189
174
205
189
50
174
80
206
287
207
Jeremiah
2.6
2.7
2.8
3.15
5.13
10.6
10.16
10.21
14.10
14.22
80
287
174
174
313
205
287
174
70
210
342
20.1
22.1-23.6
22.22
23.1-4
23.18-32
23.18-22
23.19
23.21-22
24.34-36
26.11
27.7
30.23
31.4-5
31.4
31.6
31.31-34
32.20
32.24
32.38-40
33.14
33.18
34
38.21^10.8
38.28
50.6
51.19

282
174
174
174
313
313
52
315
174
205
170
52
123
123
123
183
206
64
206
83
137
174
63
63
174
287
Ezekiel
34
34.1
34.23
36.8-15
37.15-23
37.24
37.26-27
Jonah
297
174
174
183
183
174
206
4.3
4.9
207
126
Micah
5.3
6.8
7.14
7.18
174
70
287
205, 287
Daniel
1.7
205
9.15
206, 207
Hosea
2.16
13.4
80
205
Joel
2.17
Habakkuk
2.22
3.12-13
73
52
Haggai
1.4
170
Zechariah
3.1
4.2
287
28
287
Amos
2.10
7.15
80
70
Obadiah
9.5-6
312
4.7
9.14
11.4
11.8
11.16
202
52
174
174
174
Ecclesiasticus
12.11
210
OTHER ANCIENT REFERENCES
Egyptian Texts
AMENHOTEP III
Mortuary inscription
257 n. 29
NEFERHOTEPI
Great Abydos Stele
32-43
268 n. 71
39-40
278 n. 107
HATSHEPSUT
Karnak Obelisk
South 1. 8, West 11. 1-2
261 n. 43
SENWOSRET
(SESOSTRIS) I
Atum Heliopolis inscr
ARE I 502 11. 6
264 n. 57
Speos Artemidos
11. 35-36
261 n. 43
MERIKARE
ARE I 403
257 n. 29
SETII
A/?III105 255 n. 19
TUTHMOSIS III
A/?II418,425-30
255 n. 19
Poetical Stela 257 n. 29
TUTHMOSIS IV
ARE II mi 255 n. 19
Hittite Text
Tudhaliyas's treaty with
Ulmi/Duppi-Tesub
274 n. 93
Mesopotamian Texts
ADAD-NIRARI III
RIM-AP 3
A.O.104.2.1.4
257 n. 31
ADAD-NIRARI V
Treaty with Mati'ilu
275 n. 96
343
Index of References
ASHURBANIPAL
Cylinder B V 44 -46
255 n. 22
Prunkinschrift 6 stele S 2
37-45
277 n. 106
Tontafelinschrift
5obv9-10
272 n. 86
14obvII 26-34, rv 51
257 n. 32
ASHURNASIRPAL
Hymn to Ishtar
266-68
11. 26-27
267 n. 70
CURSE OF AGADE
94-148
259 n. 39
prophecy:
Langdonl914pl.III
11. 20-21
273 n. 90
GUDEA
Cylinder A
cols 1-12
258 n. 33,
258 n. 35
Cylinder B
cols xxii-xxiv 8
278 n. 108
HAMMURAPI
R1M-EP 4
E4.3.6.1411.8-9,
1611.9-10
265 n. 61
KUDUR-MABUK
R1M-EP 4
E4.2.13.3
277 n. 104
EANATUM
SARI I La 3.1,2
256 n. 24
SARI I La 3.5, 6, 8
256 n. 25
E4.2.13.10
11. 22-24
11. 28-47
ENANATUM
SARI I La 4.3 263 n. 52
E4.2.13.16
11.6ff
ENUMA ELISH
vi 49-79
256 n. 24
LUGALZAGESI
SARI I Urn 1A
256 n. 26
277 n. 104
272 n. 85
NABOPOLASSAR
Langdon 1
256 n. 28
1 col. Ill 11. 47-49

273 n. 87
256 n. 28
NEBUCHADNEZZAR II
Langdon 9
iii 56-59
272 n. 83
NUR-ADAD
IRSA IVB8c
256 n. 27
RIM-EP 4
E4.2.8.4
256 n. 27
SAMSU-ILUNA
IRSA IVbC7b-d
256 n. 27
RIM-EP 4
E4.3.1 passim 265 n. 61
E4.2.13 passim
265 n. 60
4.3.7.3,5,7 256 n. 27
265 n. 60
264 n. 58
ESARHADDON
Assur A
iii 42-IV 6
258 n. 35
vii 16-25
278 n. 110
Assur B
vii 26-34
253 n. 13
Babylon A-G
ep. 111.22-23 265 n. 62
ep. 39 11. 6-9 272 n. 84
K2401 rev 15'-36'
271 n. 80
NABONIDUS
Langdon
1 i16-39
258 n. 33
2i2
265 n. 63
2119-12
271 n. 81
2ii23
271 n. 81,
272 n. 86
2 ii 24-25
274 n. 91
4 ii 26-27
274 n. 92
4 u 48-57
258 n. 33
6i5
265 n. 63
7 vii 6-10
273 n. 88
8 vi 6-36
258 n. 33
E4.3.7.3
11.13-21
11. 82-92
11.107-23
263 n. 53
263 n. 53
268 n. 71
E4.3.7.5
11. 67-83
268 n. 71
E4.3.7.7
11. 30-47, 63-79
11.128-38
266 n. 66
268 n. 71
E4.3.7.8
11. 77-89
268 n. 71
SARGONII
Bullinscr95
253 n. 16
344
Cylinder inscr
53-56
253 n. 15
Wincklerl
p. 128 11. 154-55
260 n. 40
SENNACHERIB
Schroder II no. 122
28-30 = Luckenbill
Assur 1.2 28-30
259 n. 37,
260 n. 40
Luckenbill
ch.VIAl 1.92 279 n. 113
ch.Vm a-e
259 n. 37
TUKULTI-NINURTAI
RIM-AP 1
A.O.78.
11-16
259 n. 37
1111.82-84
257 n. 32,
259 n. 37
TUKULTI-NINURTA II
RIM-AP 2
A.0.101.U80
255 n. 20
CTA4(IIAB)
IV 28-30
29
30
256 n. 24
62 n. 38
62 n. 38
62 n. 38
MESHA
Gibson I
no.!6;4/Ino.l81
257 n. 30
11.14,19,32
255 n. 19
PANAMMU
UR-NAMMU
Hymn on Ekur Castellino
p.1061.10
264 n. 59
Gibson lino. 13
1.9
255 n. 19
11.12-15
268 n. 71
URNANSHE
SARIIL&1.6
no. 14
11.1-2
256n. 25
255 n. 19
SHALMANESERI
EbelingXXI.l
11.27-34
269 n. 75
SULGI
Castellino hymn C1.3
255 n. 22
Klein Hymn X
53-55
264 n. 59
TIGLATHPILESERI
A/?/2p.29105(77)
279 n. 112
RIM-AP 2
A.O.87.1
ii 36-39
vi 85-90
vii60,71
vii71-75
viii 17-38
viii 35
255 n. 20
256 n. 25
256 n. 25
257 n. 32
269 n. 75
278 n. 109
URU'INIMGINA
(URUKAGINA)
SEFIRE STELAE
5A/VILa9.14q
264 n. 58
Gibson II
no. 7
1.14 etpassim 275 n. 96
WARAD-SIN
no. 9
RIM-EP 4
E4.2.13.16
11.42-44
277 n. 104
ZIMRI-LIM
ARMXIttno.m,
XXVI no. 234
258 n. 33,
259 n. 38
rev.7-10'
275 n. 96
TELL FEKHERIYE
INSCRIPTION
Aramaic text
11.6-12
270 n. 79
1.8
196 n. 73
Assyrian text
11.8-12,15-18 270 n. 79
1.11
196 n. 73
262 n. 46
ZAKKUR STELE
West Semitic Texts

4Q FLORILEGIUM
1.7
69n.66
1.10
70n.69
Gibson II
no. 5
257 n. 31
col.A, 11.13-17
255 n. 19
INDEX OF WORDS
HEBREW
Notes
(1) In some instances, it is the root rather than the form that occurs in the text which is
indexed.
(2) Where an index entry includes a transliteration, page references to this form are
included here as well as in the Transliterated Hebrew index.
K
mrr T, 76 n. 79, 202, 207 n. 103,

210
^n 'ohel, 82, 201 n. 85, 247
pOOl bnK, 68 n. 59, 166, 171-72, 212,
214, 216 n. 119,218
tnN, see rfyn

infl, 178
nQK, 66n.49, 141, 144,237-38
"pK, 114n. 4
13 TEK, 133n. 70
[mrr/D'H^n] jriN, 55 n. 15, 56 n. 17,
56 n. 21, 58-60 nn. 25-29, 119,
121, 124 n. 40, 124 n. 43, 125 n.
45, 125 n. 47,126 n. 49, 131 nn.
65-66,133, 136 n. 78, 137 n. 81,
153, 202
3
rra bayit, 54, 60, 70-72, 75-76, 84,

117-18,121,131,139,146,163,
168-69, 171-72, 175, 178, 186-220
passim, 222-23 (esp. n. 126),
226-29, 263, 294, 306
fD'TDai JT3, 75 n. 78, 194-95, 216
IT3 linked with 3D\ 163, 171-72, 178 n.
38, 182, 190, 202, 212, 214, 216 n.
119,219,247
DTO3, 52 n. 7, 52 n. 9, 101 (esp. n. 40),

see also baka'
TO nn, see nor

Dna 'jio, 95,105,127
nvr 'E HK 0pa, 109 n. 52
!T13 b'rtt, 206 n. 101, 275-76, 306
-[ID, 84 n. 93, 131, 139, 141, 210, 292 n.
32, see also b'rakd
3
x-|m n nb3,84n. 91,209n. 111,210

n. 115,288
1
131, 78 n. 82, 173 n. 24, 203

-131 131, 68 n. 60, 171, 173, 207 n. 104,
310
-131 linked with mrr, 70 n. 69, 79 n. 84,
82 n. 88, 84 n92, 207, 210, 225,
286 n. 17, 293 n. 34, 294, 300
n
Tan, 70 n. 67, 187 n. 56, 209 n. 111
'n, 119n. 28, 171 n. 19
TH T/W), 132 n. 67, 135 n. 75, 200,
244 n. 13, 306
"131 D^pn, 82 n. 88
T^nnn hithallek, 68 n. 59, 171 n. 19,
172, 212, 214, 240, 247
346
i
rrm, 63 n. 39, 70 n. 68, 71 n. 70, 188,
190, 293
p nn vn, 28n. 19
T
ITIT, 72 n. 72, 188-90, 195-98, 216, 230

n. 133
n
ion hesed, 73 n. 76, 193, 274
f7Q, 67, 70, 131-32, 135, 140, 163, 164,

179,190,200-201,212,232,
244-45, 247, 249, 268, 294, 298,
306, see also "[^(H), see also
melek
nifton mamlakd, 72 n. 74, 290 n. 29,
298, 306
31? N^D, 210 n. 113
Dlpn, 69 n. 64, 88 n. 4, 136 n. 80, 183
nn. 45-46, 269 n. 72, see also DID
ntDQ,49n. 1,285-87
ro'xinvân USGJD, 306 n. 6
rnn, 126 nn. 50-51
rotOX prrftK] mrr YHWHS'ba'ot, 55 i

16, 64 n. 43, 83 n. 90, 119, 138-39
146, 153, 176-77, 201 n. 84,
208-209, 241
pa1? mrr mr, 101

3D"1 ydSab, seerf2
T33, 50, 66, 178-79, 247, 249, 265, 282,

285-86, 293, 298-99, see also
ndgid
rftm nah"ld, 269 n. 72, 286
]-D3, 58 n. 24, 194,209,218
Rfo], 32, 97 n. 34, 122, 133 n. 70, 136 n.
78
0
"7K-IET 11QH ^D, 138n. 85

KOD kisse, 72 n. 74, 75 n. 78, 194-95,
242, 272, 298
?
Til n 0p>, 87, 89 n. 7, 91 n. 9, 91 n.

12,97,99, 115-16
'?, 170 n. 17, 187 n. 55, 192 n. 68, 220
chnxh, see D'TIU iu

mrr 'DS1?, 60 n. 29, 62 n. 38, 85, 92 n.
14, 109 n. 52, 123 n. 39, 125 n. 45
133, 135, 137 n. 83, 142, 144, 157
201, 208 n. 109, 226, 238, 243,
298, 306
'Qtf7, 72 n. 73, 170 n. 17, 191-92, 195,
199
"iro, 52 n. 8
y
-DP, 67 n. 57, 75-76 nn. 78-79, 78-79
nn. 81-84, 141, 168 n. 12, 176,
179, 202, 203, 207, 209 n. 110,
210, 225, 227 n. 131,237,240
tf7\?hKhw IS, 70 n. 67, 72 n. 74, 75 n.
78, 82 n. 87, 194-95 (esp. n. 72),
197, 201 n. 85, 206 n. 101,207,
209 n. 110,226
ITU, 53 n. ll,66n. 52, 78 n. 81,98, 114,
116,203,225
WlVriTU, see HTr pa
'PBn *?S, 59 n. 28
x--|&n + x-Q^y, 295 n. 38
m rm/ntoJ>, 70 n. 69, 75 n. 78, 187-88
(esp. n. 58), 209, 220
^DQ, 69 n. 66, 115 n. 9, 161, see also
cnto
pS, 50 n. 4, 95 n. 23, 127 n. 53, 235

nti> pS, 121 (esp. n. 53)
Index of Words
347
^tOET 'DSBrcniD ['PDQ?], 68 n. 61, 172
n. 21, 173 n. 23, 174 n. 25, 174 n.
mitt, 52 n. 8, 61 n. 36, 101, 133 n. 69
2o, ZtO n. o4
3 m ..."? n^2J, 59 n. 26, 124 n. 43

BSCJ, 70 n. 67, 184 n. 48, see also *V30
D'Rinn *mr\, see D'ton
T5^'275
&
Dlpa DTfo, 69 n. 64, 183 n. 45
DC DID, 205 n. 99
D"fn mm, 77 n. 80, 203
!ZJ
mn'D *?tD Sa'al bYHWH, 33, 92 n. 14,

247, 254
TRANSLITERATED HEBREW
Note
In some instances, it is the root rather than the form that occurs in the text which is indexed.
'am, 287
baka', 52 n.9
bayit, 214, 222-23 (esp. n.126), 226, 247,
263
b'rakd, 141, 292 n.32
b'rtt, 275-76
go'c/,209n.lll
hesed,274
hithallek, 247
fa'we, 298
mamlaka, 290, 298, 306
wte*, 23, 85, 110-11, 132-33, 142-44,
157-59, 164, 167, 179-82, 200,
228-29, 238-46, 247-49, 252, 257,
281-316
moSel, 282 n.5

mdSf, 288
nagid, 142, 144, 155, 158-59, 164,
179-80, 183, 187, 215, 222, 229,
238-46, 247-49, 266, 280, 280-316
nahald, 286, 287
'oAe/,247
'old, 138
ro'<?&, 266 n.65
jfa'a/ bYHWH, 247
282
riamtm, 64 n.42, 65 n.45, 138-39
ydSab, 247
YHWH S'ba'ot, 119, 138-39, 153, 176-77,
209,241
GREEK
apxcov, 142
oiKia, 222 n. 126

5
8iaK07UOv, 50 n. 4
(J
cruvaeiaîo*;, 52 n. 8
K
Kt>pie, 76 n. 79
348

OTHER ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES
Note
In some instances, it is the root rather than the form that occurs-in the text which is
indexed.
abubu, 255 n. 23
annu,254n. 18, 258 n. 33
aSabu, 263
bltu, 263
byt, 196 n. 73
erenu, 263
is/Squ, 258 n. 33
kussi, 272 n. 86
Ihdm, 62 n. 38
Isb, 62 n. 38
mehu, 255 n. 22
me-ldm, 255 n. 20, 255 n. 22
melammu, 255 n. 20
muSabu, 263
p'n, 62 n. 38
qabu, 258 n. 33
qibltu, 258 n. 33
rahdsu, 255 n. 23
re'u(m), 264, 266

rihis/ltu, 255 n. 23
ri/ww, 255 n. 23
Satin, 270 n. 79
Sarru(m), 266, 272 n. 86
sipa, 264
w^rw, 258 n. 33
Siru, 258 n. 33
Subtu, 263
iwfe'rA, 62 n. 38
wyshq, 62 n. 38
(w)ykrkr, 62 n. 38
></?r9, 62 n. 38
ytpd, 62 n. 38
zeru, 196 n. 73
zilrw, 258 n. 33
zr", 196 n. 73
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Abou-Assaf, A. 196,270
Ackroyd, P.R. 183
Ahlstrom, G.W. 62
Alt, A. 283
Austin, J.L. 185
Avishur.N. 62,273
Blakemore, D. 20, 116
Boer, PA.H. de 63
Bordreuil.P. 196,270,271
Borger, R. 253, 258, 265, 272, 278
Brooke, G.J. 70
Brunnow, R.E. 266
Calderone, PJ. 270,274
Caquot, A. 131, 189
Carlson, R.A. 24,31,283
Castellino, G.R. 255, 264
Chiera,E. 264
Clark, H.H. 20
Clines, D.J.A. 12
Cooper, J.S. 260
Coulthard, M. 20
Eslinger, L. 24, 189, 194, 197, 270, 275

Falkenstein, A. 262
Figgis, J.N. 19
Flanagan, J.W. 27
Fokkelman, J.P. 24
Frankfort, H. 249
Frayne, D.R. 256, 263, 265, 266, 268,
277
Gadd, C.J. 249, 272
Gelston, A. 183
Gibson, J.C.L. 255, 257, 268, 275
Grayson, A.K. 255, 257, 259, 270, 278,
279
Green, G.M. 20
Halpern,B. 281,283
Hasel.G. 281
Herrmann, S. 166, 227, 258, 260
Hurowitz, V. 251,263
Ishida,T. 259,260,270,281
Derrida,J. 21,35
Dhorme, E.P. 70
Donner, H. 257
Dossin, G. 259
Driver, G.R. 70
Driver, S.R. 54, 65,198
Durand, J.-M. 258, 259, 262
Dus, J. 216
Jeremias, J. 101,255
Ebeling.E. 269
Eissfeldt,O. 77,203
Ellis, R.S. 259
Engnell,!. 249
Labat,R. 249
Lackenbacher, S. 258
Langdon.S. 256,265,271-74
Leech, G. 20
Kaiser, W.C., Jr 203

Kapelrud, A.S. 256
Klein.J. 264
Kleiner, M. 24,92
Klostermann, A. 70, 165
Kupper, J.-R. 258, 259, 262
350
Legrain, L. 272
Levine, L.D. 250
Lichtheim, M. 257
Liverani, M. 249
Locke, J. 19,306
Loretz, O. 181
Luckenbill, D.D. 279
Lyon, D.G. 253
Mann, T.W. 101
McCarter, K. 11, 39, 50, 52, 54, 57-59,
61,62,64-67,69,71-73,78,79,
120, 121, 128, 137, 170, 178, 183,
285
McCarthy, D.J. 274
Meissner, B. 258
Mettinger, T.N.D. 119,189,196-98,
264,270,281,283
Millard, A.R. 196, 270, 271
Miller, J.M. 120
Mowinckel, S. 197, 198, 264, 270
Murray, D.F. 68, 69, 88, 94, 137, 168,
173, 174, 181, 183, 218, 264, 269,
275, 277
Rehm,M. 57,59,82
Richter, W. 24, 94, 281, 283
Robert, P. de 131
Roberts, J.J.M. 120
Rollig.W. 257
Rost, L. 176, 181, 185,209
Schmidt, L. 182,283,294,300
Schroder, O. 259,272
Schulz, A. 69
Scriba, A. 101
Seow,C.L. 119,232
Seux, M.-J. 266, 267
Smith, H.P. 61,216
Soden, W. von 266, 267
Sollberger, E. 264
Spinoza, B. de 313
Staunford, W. Sir 19
Streck,M. 257,272,278
Thenius, O. 57
Ulshofer, H.K. 256, 264
Vaux, R. de 274
Niccacci, A. 63
Niehaus.J. 101,256
Noth,M. 283
Nowack,W. 70
O'Connor, M. 63,94
Oppenheim, H.L. 258
Orlinsky, H.M. 65
Otto, E. 258
Porter, J.R. 134
Posener, G. 249,268,269
Waltke, B.K. 63,94

Weber, M. 17
Weippert,M. 251,257,271,273
Wellhausen, J. 54, 60, 66, 73, 75, 198,
286
Whitelam, K.W. 249
Willi,T. 37,77,83
Winckler.H. 260
Zobel, H.-J. 119
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
abbreviation, in Chronicles, 56 n. 19, 60

n. 30, 60 n. 33, 64 n. 41, 64 nn. 4344, 67 n. 58, 73 n. 75, 84 nn. 9192, 124 n. 43, 146, 164 n. 3
Abigail, 141, 142, 291-300, 306
Abinadab, 120-22
Abner, 134, 295
Abydos,268n. 71,278n. 107
AchishofGath, 88, 129
Adad, 256 n. 25, 257 n. 32, 258 n. 35,
259 n. 37, 260 n. 40, 263 n. 53, 269
n. 75
Adad-Nirari III, 257 n. 31
Adad-Nirari V, 275 n. 96
Agade, 259 n. 39
agreement, see covenant
Ahijah, 133, 299 n. 41
Ahio, 56 n. 21,59n. 27, 117n. 18,122,
125
alienation, see estrangement
Amenhotep III, 257 n. 29
Ammonites, 288 n. 25, see also Nahash
Amon/Amun-Re, 257 n. 29, 261 n. 43
An(u), 256 n. 25, 257 n. 32, 264 n. 59,
269 n. 75
anger, 126, 127, 278 n. 110, 292
Arbela, 273 n. 90
ark, Ch. 4 passim
control of, 19, 27, 32, 33, 35, 97,
113, 126, 127,131-33,139, 156,
201,202, 209-12,226, Ch. 6
passim, 247, 248, 308, 309
installation of, 114, 136-38,
160-62, 164-66
ritual procession of, 101 n. 40,
117-34,233,234
on ox-cart, 121
triumphal progress of, 117-24, 133,

134,233
deferral of, 124-33
see also Yahweh of Hosts
Ashdod, 130 n. 62
Ashur (ASsur), 253, 255 n. 20, 256 n. 25,
259 n. 37, 269 n. 75, 272 n. 86, 278
n. 110,279
Ashurbanipal, 255 n. 22, 257 n. 32, 272,
277
Ashurnasirpal, 266-68
Assyria, 196 n. 73, Ch. 7 passim, 282
n.4
Arum, 264 n. 57
author
envisaged, 22, 23, 318
implied, 22, 129, 131,318
authority, 18, 167, 186, 226, 227, 240,
246, 282, Ch. 9 passim, see also
legitimation; power
Aya (Aia), 263 n. 53, 271 n. 81, 274
Azariah, 122 n. 34, 282 n. 3
Baalah, 54, 55 nn. 13-15
Baalism, 304 n. 3
Baal Judah, 53 n. 10, 54 n. 13, 91 n. 10,
102,113, 117-22,133, 145, 149,
152,153,233,240,254
Baal Perizim, 94, 95 n. 23, 104, 120 n.
29, 235
Baal-shameym, 255 n. 19
Baasha, 282 n. 6, 283, 299 n. 41, 304 n. 3
Babylon, Ch. 7 passim
Bakaim/Baka, 52 n. 9, 53 n. 10, 101, 102
esp. n. 40, 120 n. 29
battle theophany, see theophany
Ba'u (Bau), 264 n. 58
352
Belshazzar, 274
Beth Shemesh, 125 n. 45, 126 n. 49, 128
n. 55, 130 n. 61, 234 n. 8
binary oppositions, see rhetoric,
devices/elements, antithesis
blessing
bestowed by Abigail, 292 n. 32
bestowed by god(s), 247, 271, 278
bestowed by king, 31, 138-44, 146,
158, 309
women included, 138 nn,
84-85
bestowed by Michal, 140, 292
bestowed by Yahweh, 84 n. 33,
113, 114,130-33, 137-39,146,
153,156,158,210,211,226,
229, 232, 235-39, 244-46, 280,
304, 308-12
booty, 122, 134, 140, 233
cedar-wood, passim esp. 263
city, cultic inauguration of new royal,
120 n. 31, 129, 136 n. 79, 137 n.
81, 139, 252-54
closure
ideological, 34, 95
narrative, see narrative,
devices/elements
CN-PN string, 49 n. 1, 67 n. 57, 134,
135 esp. n. 75, 164, 167, 168, 176,
179, 183, 200, 236, 244 n. 13, 306
coherence, see discourse,
devices/elements
collusion, of Yahweh, 241, 242
'committal-formula', see victory, divine
assurance of
compact, 85, 297, see also covenant
compromise/concession, 303
by king, 229, 306, 307
by prophet, 305, 306, 314-16
by Yahweh, 197, 229, 237, 249,
280,298,305,310,311
conflict, see plot, devices, conflict
consultation
dream oracle, 258 n. 33, 259 n. 38,
262 n. 46
ofgod(s), 254, 255, 258-60
affirmation, 94, 254-62
refusal, 100, 214, 259 n. 39,

262, 309, 310
of Yahweh, 33, 86, 87, 92, 93, 100
n.37, 103-11, 129, 132, 156-58,
162, 166, 210, 232-36, 247, 254,
300, 313
priestly, 92, 109 n. 52, 313, 314
prophetic, 109 n. 52, 167, 240, 300
tit-for-tat, do utdes, 93, 267-73,
279
see also mediation
covenant
Davidic, 221 n. 125, 274-77, 306,
307
formulary, 193 n. 69, 206
Sinaitic, 275 n. 97
DaganofTerqa,259n. 38
Damqu,253n. 15
dance, see music
Dattasa, 274 n. 93
David
afraid, 128n. 54
devious, manipulative, 61 n. 35,
111, 163, 177, 233, 240-46, 260,
299, 304
different from/with Yahweh, Ch. 4
passim, Ch. 5 passim
etiological naming of places, 96
n. 27, 127n. 53
prayer of, 162, 199-211, 224-26,
229, 278, 279
Yahweh active through, 95 n. 24,
100-102
see also priest, David as;
relationship, to Israel
deference, 33-35, Ch. 3 passim, Ch. 5
passim
as mediation, see consultation,
prophetic
as postponement, 33-35,188
as self-depreciation/ self-effacement, 95, 96, 202, 203, 205, 206,
210, 211, 224-26, 292, 293, 310
as submission/subservience, 76
n.79, 102, 103, 109-111, 200202, 207 n. 103, 210, 226, 24346,288,289,310
Index of Subjects
democracy, 312, 313
descendant, see offspring
difference, 33-35, Ch. 4 passim, Ch. 5
passim, 236, 246, Ch. 9 passim
esp. 302, 303 and 311-16
as discrepancy/disparity, 233, 239
discourse, 318
devices/elements
anaphora, 96-98, 116, 117,
317
cliche/formulaic expression,
70 n. 68,94, 103, 110, 130
n. 63, 135 n. 75, 202-208,
210, 224, 244, 266, 267,
280, 286 n. 18
coherence, 22, 88 n. 6, 95
n. 24, 114,187,190-93,
195, 197-200
double question, 92, 93, 109,
172-75, 234, 313
given-new, 64 n. 42, 172,
173,318
kataphora, 177, 178, 319
logic, 30-32, 54 n. 14, 59, 62,
101, 113,116, 117,136
n. 79, 147, 165, 172, 181,
187 n. 55, 191,196-98,214,
219, 220, 223, 240, 269
processing effort, 96 n. 28,
114, 116 n. 15, 185, 195,
319
reference, 88 n. 6, 136 n. 80,
195-97
relevance, 88 n. 6,116 n. 15,
125 n. 47, 131,163-64, 190,
197, 220 n. 123,293,294,
319
salience, 108,131 n. 66, 142,
153,163,170,187,207,
220 n. 123,276,287,319
segmentation markers, 27-33,
163, 176, 185, 199, 204,
205,207,211,212,215,
216
segment subtopic, 183, 184
summary statement, 28, 29,
195,196,203,215,216
topic-comment, 169, 172
353
n.22,178,183, 186,187,
195-97, 215, 216, 242,
319
well-formedness, 196-98
see also rhetoric, devices/
elements
disputation, disputatory oracle, 169, 21826
Domus, 222 n. 126
dream theophany, see consultation,
dream oracle
Duppi-Teub, 274 n. 93
Dur-Sharrukin, 253, 260 n. 40
dynastic succession, 243, 271-73, 276,
294, 298, 301, Ch. 9 passim, see
also House, metaphoric; offspring
Eanatum, 256 nn. 24-25
Eanna, 264 n. 59
Ebabbar, 263 n. 53, 265 nn. 60-61, 26
n. 71
Ebarra, 271 n. 81
effacement, see deference, as selfdepreciation
egalitarianism, 312, 313
Egallugalsharrakurkurra, 279
Ehulhul (fi hul hul), 273, 257 n. 32
Ekisnugal, 265 n. 60
Ekur, 259 n. 39, 264, 265 n. 60
Eleazar, 122 n. 34
Elides, the, 133 n. 70, 234, 314
Emagmas", 267
Enanatum, 263 n. 52
Eninna, 278
Enlil, 264 n. 59, 266 n. 66
Ephod, 92 n. 14, 133 n. 70
Eqron, 121, 130 n. 62
Esagila, 257 n. 32, 265 n. 62, 272
Esarhaddon, 253 n. 13, 254 n. 18, 258 n.
35, 261 n. 42, 262, 265, 271-73 n.
90, 277, 278
Esharra, 253 n. 13
Eshbaal, see Ishbosheth
Etar, see Ishtar
estate, royal, see honour, of king
estrangement
Michal from David, 135, 136, 139145,154-56,158, 159
354
see also David, different from/with

Yahweh
Etemenanki, 272, 273
E-ulmaS, 259 n. 39
Ezikalama, 265 n. 61
Figura etymologica, 70 n. 69, 207 n. 104
flood, see theophany, storm
fortress, identity of, 88 n. 6
Ganunmah, 272
Gath, 88, 129-31
Geba, 53 n. 10, 102, 120 n. 29
Gezer, 102, 113, 119, 136 n. 79
Gibea(h), 53 n. 10, 56 n. 18, 102, 120 n.
29, 121, 288
Gibeon, 53 n. 10, 94 n. 22, 119 n. 22
Gudea, 258 n. 33, 258 nn. 35-36, 258 n.
36, 261 n. 42, 262, 278
Guzan, 270 n. 79
Hadad, 268 n. 71,270n. 79
Hamath, 257
Hammurapi, 265
Harran, 273
Hatshepsut, 261 n. 43
Hearing, as thematic, 52 n. 8, 88, 89,
103-106, 158, 199
Hebron, 29, 115n. 11,295,306
Heliopolis, 264 n. 57
Heracleopolis, 257 n. 29
Hezekiah, 58 n. 24, 201 n. 84, 282
historical kernel, 26 n. 15, 28 n. 20, 88 n.
6, 118n. 20, 127 n. 53, 137 n. 81,
162 n. 2, 166 n. 8,171 n. 19, 252 n.
8, 254 n. 17, 256 n. 25, 259 n. 39,
284, 289 n. 28, 303 n. 2, 304 n. 3
Hittite treaty, 274 n. 93
honour
of king, 139-45, 157-59, 166, 178,
182,212,308
of Yahweh, 205-210
Horus, 273 n. 89
house
'build' contra 'make', 187, 188,
209, 220, 238
literal, 31, 139, Ch. 5 passim, 239,
243, 246, 279
metaphoric, 29-31, 158, Ch. 5

passim, 232, 236, 242-47, 251,
269, 270, 274 n. 93, 277, 279,
293,294,306,311
metonymic, 30-31, Ch. 5 passim,
240, 242, 245, 247, 248, 253,
259 nn. 37-38, 262 n. 46, 26365, 269, 270, 309
Hymnus der Beamten, see royal novel
ideology, 22-24, 34, 109-11, 156-59,
226-30,245,246,311-16
divine, 34, 95, 119 n. 28, 214
prophetic, 313-16
royal, 164, Ch. 7 passim, Ch. 8
passim, 305
implicature, 21-24, 32, 65 n. 48, 85, 9395, 97 n. 33, 101 n. 40, 102, 11318, 122-27, 131, 134 n. 72, 135 n.
74, 136 n. 79, 165, 191 n. 67, 195,
201, 203, 215, 220, 226, 229, 242,
261, 265, 286-91, 296 n. 39, 299 n.
41,300,301,313,318
Inanna, 264 n. 59, 265 n. 61
incomparability
of god(s), 277, 278
of Israel, 205
of Yahweh, 162, 205, 206, 277
infinitive, intensifying, 94 nn. 20-21
information, presupposed, see
presupposition, pragmatic
inquire of Yahweh, see consultation
Irigal, 264 n. 59
irony, see rhetoric, devices/elements
Ishbosheth, 295
Ishme Dagan, 266 n. 68
Ishtar (Istar, Estar), 255 n. 22, 256 n. 25,
257 n. 32, 259 n. 37, 266-68, 271,
273 n. 90
Israel, contra Judah, 26, 85, 295, 306,
307
'issue from the loins of and parallel
expressions, 72 n. 71, 189, 190
Jehiel, 282 n. 3
Jehu (king), 134 n. 71, 283 n. 7, 304 n. 3
Jehu (prophet), 299 n. 41
Jeremiah, 282, 313, 316
Index of Subjects
Jeroboam, 291 n. 31, 282 n. 6, 299 n. 41,
304 n. 3
Joab, 26, 295
Jonathan, 27, 128 n. 54, 209 n. Ill, 291,
295
Josiah, 58 n. 24, 282 n. 3, 291 n. 31
Judah, contra Israel, 26, 85, 295, 306,
307
Judges, 68 n. 61, 184,288,313
Kheti, 257 n. 29
Kibri-Dagan, 259 n. 38, 262
King, passim, esp. 23, 34, 115 n. 6, 166
n. 10, 237, 241, Ch. 7 passim, 282
n. 5, 290, 306-308
housing of tutelary deity, 164, 212,
Ch. 7 passim esp. 269-72
role distinguished from holder, 132
n. 67, 140, 144, see also CN-PN
string
see also city; honour; ideology;
power; prerogative; sovereignty;
subject
Kiriath Baal, 54 n. 13
Kiriath Jearim, 53 n. 10, 54-55 nn. 1315, 113, 118-22, 128 n. 55, 130 n.
61, 233, 234
Kis, 266 n. 66, 268 n. 71
Kudur-Mabuk, 256, 265, 272, 277
Lagash, 256 nn. 24-25, 258 n. 33, 263 n.
52, 278
Larsa, 256
leader(ship), Ch. 8 passim
appointed/anointed by Yahweh,
142, 183, 184,214,222,229,'
238, 241, 244, 249, 264, 265,
285-88, 305, 306,310
military, 282-83, 285, 295-97, 304
polarities of, Ch. 9 passim
and power, 310-15
socio-religious, 285, 286, 296-301
legitimation, 18-20, 282
by god(s), 251, 261
by Yahweh, 341
see also authority; power
Lugalzagesi, 264 n. 58
355
Mahanaim, 295
marching, sound of, 52 n. 8, 101, 102
Marduk, 256 n. 24, 265 n. 62, 271-73
Mari, 262
Mati'ilu of Arpad, 275 n. 96
mediation, 18, 34 n. 35, 93, 100 n. 37,
202,303, 304
control of, 308, 309, 311,312
priestly, 109 n. 52, 246, 308, 309
prophetic, 20, 34, 109 n. 52, 167,
176, 199, 209 n. 111,211,219,
223, 224, 240, 243, 246, 287-89,
299-301,304,312-16
see also consultation
Mephibosheth/Meribbaal, 295 n. 37
Merikare, 257 n. 29
Mesha, 255 n. 19, 257
Mesopotamia, Ch. 7 passim
Michal, 134-45, 153-59, 178
'daughter of Saul', 134, 135, 139,
144
despised David, 135, 136, 140,
141,158
expectations of king, 135, 136,
140, 141, 154, 158
lifelong barrenness, 134n. 72, 139,
141 n. 92, 145, 161
Moses, 103 n. 47, 126 n. 51, 164 n. 5,
174 n. 27, 184 n. 48, 208 n. 107,
286, 313
music, 123, 134, 140, 142, 253
Musri, 260 n. 40
Nabal, 292
Nabonidus, 258 n. 33, 258 n. 35, 261 n.
42, 262, 263 n. 52, 265, 271 n. 81,
272 n. 86, 273, 274 nn. 91-92, 275,
277
Nabopolassar, 256, 272, 273 n. 87
Nabu, 277 n. 106
Nahash of Ammon, 274 n. 94
Nakon, 124, 129
Nannar, 272, 277
Naram Sin, 259 n. 39
narrative
delimiting episodes/scenes, 25-33,
103, 113, 114, 145, 146, 162,
163, 251 n. 6
356
devices/elements
closure, 27-30, 85, 97, 139
n. 88, 146,161,215,239,
245
dischronologization, 26, 96,
97, 160, 161
framework, 106, 167,199,
229
interior monologue, 129, 132,
153, 157, 236
pause, 29, 30, 85, 89 n. 8, 199
see also plot; pragmatics
Nathan
deferent to David, 33, 146,160,
163-67, 224, 263,314
deferent to Yahweh, 167, 199, 224,
240, 243, 263, 314
see also CN-PN string; consultation; mediation; PN-CN string
Nations, gods of other, 79 n. 86, 97, 205,
206, Ch. 7 passim
Nebuchadnezzar II, 259 n. 39, 271, 272
n. 83
Neferhotep I, 268 n. 71, 278 n. 107
Nergal, 272 n. 86, 277 n. 104
Nina, 262 n. 44
Nineveh, 253 n. 15
Ningirsu, 262 n. 44, 278
Ningishzida, 278 n. 108
Ninlil, 272 n. 86
Nippur, 259 n. 39
Nur-Adad, 256
ObedEdom, 125, 128-33, 146, 149, 157,
236
offspring, 188-99, 216-17, 229 n. 133,
242,244
Omride dynasty, 304 n. 3
oracle, see consultation
Osiris, 273 n. 89, 278 n. 107
Osiris-Khentamenti, 268 n. 71
Panammu, 255 n. 19, 268 n. 71
Pananu, 255 n. 20
Pashhur, 282
patronymics, 135 n. 74
Perez Uzzah.l27 n. 53, 145
Peshitta, see Syriac
petitionary strategy, 207-10, 224-26,

267-80
Pharaoh, 273 n. 89
Philistines, 25-33, 86-108, 113-23, 127,
130,134-38, 157, 180,232-35,
245, 254, 257, 285, 286, 308
gods/images, 97, 112
plot
devices
aporia, 128, 132, 147
conflict, 17-20, 23, 197, 198,
212, 233, 246,315, see also
polemic(s)
goal desired/attained, 128,
145-48, 156, 183, 199,235,
236, 298, 308
hearing/acting on a report,
88-91,131-33, 153
static tableau, 134
stock scene, 134, 139,140,
154
suspense, 112, 212, 291 n. 31
unforeseen obstacle, 114, 126,
127, 145-51
underlying thread, 87, 147-49, 199,
215,222
see also narrative
PN-CN string, 49 n. 1,135 n. 75, 169
poetics, 17, 20-25, 51 n. 6, 52 n. 9, 95,
109-11, 127 n. 53, 134 n. 73, 136,
185, 197, 198, 216, 248
see also author, implied; reader,
implied; rhetoric
polemic(s), 17, 20-25, 248, see also
ideology; plot, devices, conflict
power
general, 17-20,310, 111
ofgod(s),252,267
of king, 35, 85, 86, 167, 191, 200,
221,232,233,239,246,247,
268, 282, 290, 299, Ch. 9 passim
of Yahweh, 34, 35, 85, 86,110,
111,127, 157, 160, 192,200,
232, 233, Ch. 9 passim
see also authority; legitimation
practical politics, see compromise
pragmatics, 17, 20-25, 136,173, 190,
197, 198, 248, Ch. 9 passim
Index of Subjects
see also discourse; narrative; plot;
rhetoric
prerogative, 19 n. 3
divine, 17, 19, 20, 34, 111, Ch. 5
passim, 231, 240, 241, 246, 247,
265,286-87,311,315
royal, 19, 20, 157, 175, Ch. 7
passim, 309-11
presupposition
pragmatic, 91-93, 113, 118, 126,
198,Ch. 1 passim, 309, 319
textual, 23, 24, 31, 32, 87, 91-93,
106, 108, 118, 126,154,175,
197,281
pretension, 17-20, 34, 111, 142, 159,
160,175-77,180,200-202,211,
215, 226, 229-31, 236-41, 244,
246-48, 252, 260, 261, 265, 266,
269, 276, 279-81, 298, 308, 311-15
priest, 18,271
David as, 124, 133, 135, 137-39,
157,238,246,308,309,311
see also consultation; mediation
privilege, see prerogative
Prophet, 18
testable, 315, 316
see also compromise; ideology;
mediation; word
QRL, 268 n. 71
qualifier, epexegetic/restrictive, 214, 220
n. 124, 293 n. 34
rain, see theophany, storm
Re, 273 n. 89
reader
envisaged, 22, 24, 113, 118, 12226, 132, 135, 211, 227, 244, 261,
303 n. 2, 316, 318
implied, 22, 129, 157,158, 318
reading
close, defined, 24, 25
literary-ideological, 37
'objective' and 'subjective', 38
relationship
to enemies, 26, 27, 69 n. 66, 95,
110, 119, 127,161-64, 167,184,
215,241,251,252,254,256,
357
266, 271, 273, 292, 293, see also

Philistines
father-son, 166 n. 10, 193, 194,
202, 203, 273, 274
to god(s), Ch. 7 passim
to Israel, 23, 27, 54 n. 13, 75 n. 78,
93, 103, 117, 142, 157,174, 17880, 183,215,237,264,265,
Ch. 8 passim, 304, 307, 310, see
also king; leader
to Yahweh, 23, see also deference;
difference
Rephaim, 88 n. 6, 91, 94, 95 nn. 22-23,
97, 98 n. 36, 101 n. 40, 102 n. 43,
103, 104, 108, 113, 120 n. 29, 124
n.42
reputation, see honour
resonance
ironic, 97, 116, 117, 126n.49,
141-43, 190, 220
textual, 114-16, 124 n. 40, 138 n.
84, 139,263
responding, as thematic, 88, 89, 103-106,
158
rhetoric
as criterion in textual criticism, 38,
39, 51-79 (nn. 6, 10,21,25,
26, 28, 35, 39, 42, 47-50, 52,
54, 55, 57, 65, 68, 70, 73, 78,
79,81)
as manipulating reader, 22,
23, 89-91
as vehicle of polemic, 22, 23,
211-30,246,261,314
devices/elements
allusion, 87, 116, 121, 122,
127, 158,200-205,207,
208, 248, 261-78, 286
ambiguity, 52 n. 9, 126 n. 51,
138 n. 85, see also house;
offspring
anticipation, 163
antithesis, 51 n. 6, 150-52,
172,180,185,219,220,
222-24, 232, 233, 247-49,
290, 302-10
backtracking, 91
balance, 51 n. 6, 89 n. 7, 97,
358

130 n. 62, 142, 171, 172,
216, 238, 270
binary opposition, see
antithesis
chiasm, 27 n. 16, 104n. 50,
142-44, 186, 187, 212-14,
270
compactness, 85 n. 1, 91-93,
98,106, 169, 185, 195,216
contrary motion, 147 n. 104,
150-53
contrast, 28, 30, 95, 106, 136,
139, 141, 144, 147-49, 164,
167, 172, 178, 185, 212,
218-24, 290, 291, 313
defamiliarization, 135, 136,
181,185
deferral, 35, 236
discordance, 236, 237
inclusio, 66 n. 52, 76 n. 78,
142, 146, 153-55, 175, 197
n. 95, 204,211-12, 216-18,
287 n. 22, 298, 318
indirection/obliqueness, 33,
154, 157, 160-61, 165-66,
210,211,216,219,220,
242,261,298,306,311
instantiation, 180
inversion, 186, 207
irony, narrative, 59 n. 28, 60
n. 31, 116-19, 127, 130 n. 2,
133 n. 70, 138-42, 177,
180-82,200,210,225,226,
233, 295 n. 38, 314
irony, verbal, 65 n. 46, 66 n.
53, 88, 97, 126, 140, 141,
169, 173, 175, 178, 179,
200-202,207,208,218,
220, 244, 245, 265
metaphor, 223, 227, 286, 287,
see also house, metaphoric;
marching, sound of; shepherd; theophany, storm
metonymy, 223, 227, see also
house, metonymic otiose
specifier, 169, 170, 177, 186,
191, 204, 295
parabolic textual structure,

104-109, 150-53
paralleling, 33, 59 n. 28, 72
n. 74, 88, 100, 108, 109,
127, 128, 133, 142-44, 169
n. 16, 175, 188-97,202204, 206 n. 100, 207 n. 104,
216-18,224,232,234,235,
270, 290, see also chiasm;
contrary motion; similar
motion
parody, 140-44, 154-56, 185,
190, 202, 238, 244, 250,
251,261, 269 n. 72,278-80,
308
paronomasia, 36, 52 n. 7, 126
n. 51, 138n. 85, 226, 229,
306 n. 6
polarization/polarity, see
antithesis
positional stress, 96 n. 25,
133, 139 n. 87, 153, 169-71,
175, 177-79, 186, 187, 194,
207, 215, 219, 220, 240,
241, see also CN-PN string
postponement, 91, 97 n. 35,
188, 194,207,211,226
puzzlement, 110, 113, 126-28,
157, 166, 187, 188, 191,
195, 200, 203, 204, 234,
235, 239
recontextualization, 184, 185,
200-202, 205, 222, 250,
276, 277
repetition, 55 n. 15, 70 n. 68,
91, 131, 153, 154, 163, 172,
186, 194, 238, 240
reversal, 97, 98, 200-202
rhetorical question, 129 n. 57,
168, 169, 172, 173, 175,
192, 202-204, 207, 219, 234
n. 7, 264 n. 55
similar motion, 147-49
third person self-reference, 70
n. 68,78 n. 81, 163, 185,
202, 215, 224
verbal equivocation, 187, 188,
222, 223, 226, 227, 229
Index of Subjects
serial effect of, 211
see also discourse, devices/
elements
right, divine/royal, see prerogative
royal novel, 166 n. 10, 227 n. 31, 258 n.
34, 260 n. 41
ruler, 18
see also king; leader
Samsu-Iluna, 256 n. 27, 263 n. 53, 265 n.
61, 266 n. 66, 268 n. 71
Samuel (prophet), 25, 63 n. 39, 126 n.
51, 142, 209 n. 111,235,284-89,
291 n. 31, 296 n. 39, 299, 305-308,
314
Sargon II, 253, 260 n. 40, 261 n. 43
Sargonid kings, 252
Saul (me/, house of), 25, 27, 29, 30, 63 n.
39, 73 n. 77, 86, 88, 92 n. 13, 115,
116, 126 n. 51, 140 n. 89, 142, 144,
145, 156, 167 n. 11, 190 n. 65, 193,
209 n. 111,238, 239, 282 n. 6,
283-99, 304-307, see also Michal
seed, see offspring
Sennacherib, 259 n. 37, 260 n. 40, 261 n.
43, 279
Senwosret (Sesostris), 264 n. 57
Seti I, 255 n. 19
Shalmaneser I, 269 n. 75, 270 n. 76, 271
Shamash (Samas), 258 n. 35, 259 n. 37,
260 n. 40, 263 n. 53, 265 n. 61, 268
n. 71,271 n. 81,274
Shar-ilani, 253 n. 15
Shaushka, 253 n. 15
shepherd, literal or metaphoric, 174, 178,
182, 222, 264-67, 295-97
Shulgi (Sulgi), 255 n. 22, 264 n. 59
Sinai, see covenant
singing, see music
Sippar, 265 n. 61, 268 n. 71, 271 n. 81
Solomon, 72 n. 71, 73 n. 75, 82 n. 88,
164 n. 3, 276 n. 100, 282 n. 6, 283
n. 7, 284, see also house; offspring
sovereignty
of god(s), 252-60
of king, 191, 195, Ch. 6 passim
of Yahweh, 34, 101, 119, 120, 17680, 191, 192, 200-202, 214, 226,
359
Ch. 6 passim, 286, 300-315

status, royal, see honour, of king
storm-theophany, see theophany
subject
divine, 168, 169, 176-80, 191, 202204,210,211,226,240,241,
243, 260, 299,313
royal, 140, 144, 158, 165, 237,
238, 241, 244, 246, 298, 299,
311
submission, see deference
subservience, see deference
supremacy, see prerogative
surge, see theophany, storm
Suzerain, see treaty texts
Syriac version, 49-66 passim
Targums, 49-66 passim
temple-building, Ch. 5 passim, Ch. 7
passim
and divine obligation, 267-69
and dynastic support, 269-73
and royal prayer, 269-73, 277, 278
and victory in battle, 256, 257
as abode for god(s), 171 n. 19, 263
as kingly priority, 257
divine sanction for, 258-60
tent-shrine, see Yahweh, 'be settled'...
territory, ritual repossession of, 120-22,
233
theocracy, 312-13
theophany, 101
battle, 52 n. 8, 102, 232, 255
dream, see consultation, dream
oracle
storm, 52 n. 8, 94-97 (esp. nn. 2223), 101, 102, 119n. 28, 120
n. 29, 121 n. 32, 127 n. 53, 235,
255 n. 22-23
Tiglath Pileser I, 255 n. 20, 256 n. 25,
257 n. 32, 269 n. 75, 278, 279
treaty texts
and 2 Sam 7.14-15, 274-76
vassal's wrongdoing, 274, 275
Tudhaliyas IV, 274 n. 93
Tukulti-Ninurta I, 257 n. 32, 259 n. 37,
266 n. 68
Tukulti-Ninurta II, 255 n. 20
360
Tuthmosis (Tuthmose) III, 255 n. 19, 257

n.29
Tuthmosis (Tuthmose) IV, 255 n. 19
Ubergabe/Obereignungsformel, see
victory, divine assurance of
Ulmi-Tesub, 274 n. 93
Umma, 264 n. 58
Ur III, 264
Urnammu (Ur-Nammu), 264
Urnanshe, 256 n. 25
UrratinaS, 255 n. 20
Uru'inimgina (Urukagina), 264
Uruku, 264 n. 58
Uzzah, 56-59, 117, 122-33 passim, 235
fatal action, esp. 124-26
vassal, see treaty texts
verb forms, syntax of, 63 n. 39, 68 n. 62,
69 n. 66, 70 n. 67, 71 n. 70, 87, 124
n. 43, 152, 163, 172, 180-84, 206
n. 101, 208, 241 n. 10, 289 n. 28,
295,319
victory, divine assurance of, 94
Warad-Sm, 256, 265, 277 n. 104
warrior, 18
god, see Yahweh of Hosts
king, 103, 250 n. 5
triumphant return, 134, 139-45,
154
see also leader, military
water, see theophany, storm
will
of god(s), 258-63
of king, 260-63
of Yahweh, 156, 157, 263, 264
wise person, 18
word(s)
of god(s), 253 n. 15, 277 n. 106
of prophet, 20, 169, 173, 175, 200,
202,207,212,215,224,227,
228, 231, 240, 243, 246, 286-89,
300, 304 n. 3, 306, 310, 312-16
of Yahweh, 68 n. 60, 109, 158,
171-76, 186, 190, 195, 199, 202204, 207-16, 219, 224, 225, 22830, 268, 274, 294-98, 300, 301,
304,307,310,311
Yahweh
'be settled'/temple contra 'move
around'/tent-shrine, 157, Ch. 5
passim (esp.161, 163, 166, 171,
172, 178,201,212-14,218),
240, 247
of Hosts, the god of the ark, 101 n.
40, 113, 117, 119-22 esp. nn. 2628, 130, 131 esp.n. 63, 138, 139,
146, 150, 153, 157, 176, 177,
201 n. 84, 208, 209, 226, 232,
236-48 passim, 211, 280, 308
' in the presence of...', 'before...',
85, 123, 125 n. 45, 133, 135,
137, 142, 144, 156-58, 194, 200,
201, 208 n. 109, 226, 237, 238,
243, 244, 277-80, 298, 306, 308
loyalty of, 193,195,274
Y'DY, 268 n. 71
Zababa, 266 n. 66, 268 n. 71
Zabala, 265 n. 61
Zak(k)ur, 255 n. 19, 257
Zimri-Lim, 259 n. 38, 262

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Donald F. Murray Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics in A Narrative Sequence About David 2 Samuel 5.17-7.29 JSOT Supplement Se PDF

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JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Sheffield Academic Press

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and Royal Pretension

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Copyright 1998 Sheffield Academic Press

Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 1: DEFINING

THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 2: DEFINING THE TEXT

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

DAVID DEFERENT WITH YAHWEH? 2 SAMUEL 5.17-25

3.1. Contextualizing the Text

DAVID DIFFERENT WITH YAHWEH: 2 SAMUEL 6

DAVID AND YAHWEHFROM DIFFERENCE TO DEFERENCE:

YAHWEH AND DAVID AT HOME AND AT WAR:

YAHWEH AND DAVID THROUGH DIFFERENCE AND

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

YAHWEH AND DAVID THROUGH DIFFERENCE AND

YAHWEH AND ISRAEL: DEFERENCE OF DIFFERENCE

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

23. Recursive Structure in 2 Samuel 7.5b-1 Ib

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

Numerals enclosed in square brackets give the reference

name of a deity, divine name

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THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 1:

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

my observation, societies whose world-view sets relationship to a god/

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

4. For a general orientation into various approaches to linguistic pragmatics

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

means of communication.5 Accordingly, basic to its concerns are the

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

Pragmatics, then, seeks to make visible how a reader constructs

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

1.1.3. The 'p '-words as Defining my Close Reading

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

begetting of royal progeny, the defeat of major external enemies, and

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

and decisive thrusts David repulses the Philistines (5.17-25), thereby

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

(1) Chapter 5.4-5 interrupts the storyline with a summarizing

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

been treated by scholars in relative isolation from one another,23 the

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

earlier, as well as much earlier, in the text.24 In particular, the reader

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

taking up the ark from its place of sequestration.

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

1. The Pragmatics of Poetics 1

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

THE PRAGMATICS OF POETICS 2:

Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension

2. Obviously, I cannot here attempt to mount a general argument to justify this

2. The Pragmatics of Poetics 2

into the overall discourse of the stretch of text in question.3 Inevitably,